Hunger Games fic: Madrigal, 1/3 (pg-13)
Title: Madrigal
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 21,837
Betas: chelziebelle all the way through, and trovia on an early draft. Thank you, ladies! It's so much better for your efforts. ♥
Characters/Pairings: Haymitch Abernathy, Finnick Odair, Johanna Mason, Mags, Plutarch Heavensbee, Chaff; Johanna/Finnick, Haymitch/Johanna
Summary: Haymitch. Finnick. Johanna. They were so much stronger together...
Author's note: Written for deathmallow for the Hunger Games Spring Fling. Generally speaking, she wanted 1) anything Haymitch/Johanna, 2) Haymitch-Finnick-Johanna bonding during the Games over the years, and 3) Johanna visiting district 12 after the war. Okay, so it was supposed to be one of those things. I wrote all of the above. Oops.
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Madrigal
Solo
50
They pulled him from the arena with his guts hanging out, or they would have been had he not been holding them in with his own two hands. Even years later, he sometimes thought the only thing that really kept him alive was the electrical charge that froze his muscles in place while he dangled from the rescue ladder. He couldn’t have let his innards fall to the ground even if he tried.
If he’d known what was to come, he actually might have.
*
Haymitch woke in a Games-controlled Capitol hospital three days later. When he woke, he felt no pain. That came later, after the drugs wore off. Capitol medicine healed the wounds on the outside. The ones on the inside… Well.
*
A week to the day after they pulled him from the arena, President Snow crowned Haymitch Abernathy of District Twelve victor of the 50th Hunger Games. Winner of the Second Quarter Quell. Once crowned, the President turned him over to Caesar Flickerman.
For three hours, he alternated between watching the “highlights” of the Quell, most of which seemed to have something to do with him, and talking to Flickerman. Haymitch found it hard to believe that he was the only one who did anything interesting in the arena. But then, history was written by the victors, right? Or at least by those who controlled the victors.
Haymitch didn’t feel victorious. He didn’t feel like he’d won anything.
*
After the closing ceremonies came the parties. One after another. People screaming his name, wanting his autograph, wanting a photograph, wanting to hear his voice, wanting to touch him. His adoring fans.
He hated every minute of it.
The parties didn’t end until he boarded the train that would return him to Twelve. He suspected they didn’t end even then; the only thing that ended was his part in them. His Games-appointed mentor, who took far too much credit for Haymitch’s win, saw him to the station and waved him aboard the train. Haymitch just nodded when the man said he’d see him again in a few months for the Victory Tour. All he wanted was to go home.
Leaning his head against the window, Haymitch watched first his mentor and then the Capitol grow smaller and smaller until they faded from sight. He could breathe again. He fell asleep on that train, the first night since the nightmare of the arena ended that was free of the memories of the kids he’d murdered, of the nightmares in which he relived the horrible things he’d seen and done.
That night on the train was the last night Haymitch Abernathy slept the whole night through.
When he stepped off the train, he smelled the acrid stench of old smoke. Days old, but not yet so old that it was actually in the past. Under the coal and the wood, there was something sweet and bitter mingled with something flowery. His mother wasn’t there to greet him, nor his brother. And not his girl, either. He was a victor, the first one District Twelve had had since Ophelia McCoy, but the only one to welcome him home was his mother’s friend, Sae Vickers.
She didn’t have to say a word. Suddenly, he knew what that bitter-sweet smell was. He quickly learned that the other wasn’t just flowers.
From that day forward, Haymitch couldn’t bear the sight or smell of a rose.
51
The reaping the following year was hard, standing in front of everyone on that stage, knowing that there was every possibility that any kids who joined him there, who left the district on a Capitol-bound train wouldn’t be coming back. Not alive, anyway. He stared out over the crowd of faces, Seam and Merchant alike, and he wanted to puke.
The girl was seventeen and Merchant and he knew her from school, or at least he recognized her, which was bad enough. The boy was twelve and Seam and he looked far too much like Haymitch’s brother. A whiff of smoke and roses invaded his nostrils; he knew it was his imagination, but felt the bile rise in the back of his throat anyway, burning him, and choked it back down.
*
The train ride to the Capitol was awful. The boy, Canute Hutson, once he got over his shyness and some natural caution in his nature, treated it like some kind of holiday, running around, shouting about all the gadgets and geegaws. The girl, Sadie Crenshaw, chatted with their bubble-headed escort, Amelia Lucasta, about pretty much nothing; he suspected that was because the only things in Lucasta’s head really were bubbles. Sadie kept sending sidelong glances Haymitch’s way, as if asking him to rescue her.
He couldn’t rescue her. He couldn’t rescue the boy. He couldn’t rescue himself. So he just stared out the window at the blur of the scenery.
*
Under any other circumstances, and dealing with anything other than the Hunger Games, Haymitch might have found all the behind-the-scenes activity leading up to the Games themselves at least interesting. As it was, things moved too fast to really focus on any of it. It didn’t help that he had no idea what he was doing.
Canute and Sadie both looked to him for advice and guidance, and he knew he should be giving it to them, but he didn’t know what to say. He parroted some of what his borrowed mentor had told him about what to do during the Opening Ceremonies, about training, about impressing the Gamemakers, but it all felt wrong. Haymitch was pretty sure his Games-appointed mentor would have been a better choice than him.
He said as much to one of his fellow mentors when he reported to Mentor Central that first day of tribute training. A few minutes later, an older woman, tiny and red haired and maybe in her forties, showed up at his side and just started showing him around the control room. All the while she talked about how to assess his tributes’ strengths and weaknesses and how to use that to work up a strategy for them in the arena, or even earlier, in training, so as to not give away too much to the other kids about what they could and couldn’t do.
Haymitch listened to Mags - from District Four, victor of the 10th Hunger Games, and a deal older than he’d thought - learning everything he could from her and the other victors she pulled in to show him the ropes.
Canute and Sadie died anyway, in that order, the boy in the bloodbath and the girl with whom he’d shared a history class, back in the day, almost a week later when the girl from Mags’ district slit her throat in her sleep.
*
When both his tributes were gone, Haymitch learned more than he ever wanted to know about being a victor in the Capitol. A few hours after Sadie died, long enough for Haymitch to return to the Training Center for a shower and some sleep, broken and filled with nightmares though it was, Snow sent one of his assistants to fetch Haymitch to the President’s office for a meeting.
That meeting was brief. Snow told Haymitch what the rest of his duties would be while he was in the Capitol, since his tributes were gone. When Haymitch protested, feeling sick to his stomach and wondering what the rosy old bastard would do if he puked on his shoes, Snow had laughed. Haymitch focused on a bright spot of red at the corner of Snow’s mouth, contracting and stretching with the movement as the man began to speak.
“The choice is yours, Mr. Abernathy. You’re an adult now, after all. But if you decide to ignore your duties as I’ve laid them out for you,” the man smiled, red and raw, “well, I’m afraid there will be consequences.”
Haymitch remembered the sight of his burned out home, smoke still rising from the ashes. His ma, his brother, sweet Connie who he’d planned to marry one day, none of them were there anymore, planted in the ground two days before he came back from his Games. There hadn’t even been any reason for Connie to be there, when that fire broke out. Hadn’t been any good reason for that fire to break out at all.
The stench of cooked meat and roses from that day filled his nose and his head as he stared at that bit of red at the corner of the President’s mouth. The President was still speaking when Haymitch spewed all over his shoes and he didn’t have to wonder anymore what Snow might do.
Raising one eyebrow, Snow stopped talking. He handed Haymitch the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit coat. “If you’re quite finished, Mr. Abernathy…”
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Haymitch looked up at the President. “I won’t do it. I ain’t no whore.” He felt cold and scared and about six years old, but then he supposed if he were really only six, Snow wouldn’t be talking about using him like those hollow-eyed women and girls back home who kept the damn Peacekeepers happy for a few extra coins to buy their kids some bread. “And it ain’t like you can hurt my family to make me do whatever it is you want.”
Snow cocked his head to the side and stared at Haymitch long enough for Haymitch to become hyper aware of the vomit on the floor and on the man’s expensive shoes. “No, Mr. Abernathy,” he said in that smooth Capitol voice of his, “but you do have friends. And the people of your district would feel it keenly if even one shipment of grain were to be lost to a railway accident or perhaps to a bit of mold.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“As I said, Mr. Abernathy. The choice is yours.”
52
Another year. Another reaping. Two more kids dead within two days of each other, but neither one of them in the bloodbath. In a way, that was almost worse. Crushed hope tasted like ash in his mouth.
When the kids were gone, the workout regimen, two hours in the Training Center gym every day to keep him healthy and in shape, and the “special engagements” began. There were more of them than the year before, half a dozen maybe. All of them older than Haymitch, but a couple of them not too. He tried to pretend with the younger ones that it was just a date, but it didn’t work all that well. He couldn’t forget that he had no real choice, no matter what that bastard Snow said; if he didn’t perform, his friends or his district would suffer for it. And always in the back of his mind was that smoking example of just how bad those “consequences” would be.
One special engagement stood out over the others. Drusilla Lovage loved the opera and she loved the Hunger Games. She claimed that Haymitch Abernathy was the most refreshing thing to come out of the arena in years.
Haymitch didn’t have many sponsors during his Games, not in the beginning, anyway. Not until he started to stand out from the crowd of other kids. Half of them died at the Cornucopia, but even so, that left twenty-four kids, Haymitch among them. As the field thinned, the money began to flow, as though the sheer number of tributes had blocked the flow of sponsors’ gifts.
Sometime during the Quell, Drusilla noticed Haymitch and saw something in him that she liked. She sent him a first aid kit that he shared with Maysilee, his district partner, as well as a hunting knife that he used with horrifying efficiency in his effort to survive.
And when it was over, and Haymitch alone was still alive, Drusilla contacted Snow’s Coordinator of Victor Affairs to collect her own form of payment. As she told Haymitch in her pretentious Capitol accents, “I would have sent for you last year, dear, but my husband fell ill and I couldn’t leave his side.”
Haymitch didn’t understand how these people could even live with themselves. Wastes of oxygen, all of them.
Drusilla took him, all polished and pretty, to the opera, something she called a madrigal. Haymitch was surprised to discover that he didn’t hate it. He didn’t understand most of it and didn’t care to, but if he listened to it with the notion that the voices themselves were instruments, it was tolerable. And there wasn’t much in the way of actual instruments involved, which made pretending that much easier and the performance itself that much more memorable.
It started out with just one voice. That lasted for a bit, and then a second joined in and a third, finally ending with the first and the last when the second one faded away.
It was something Haymitch never forgot, so maybe it was safe to say that, rather than not hating it, he might actually have liked it, if not for the circumstances. The memory of that madrigal, the way their voices blended together into something stronger than any of them were when they were apart, was the only decent thing he took away with him when he left the Capitol for his cold and empty house.
53
Haymitch was nineteen for the 53rd Annual Hunger Games. By the time they were over and he could return to his house in Twelve’s Victor’s Village - he’d never call it home - he reckoned that he was responsible for the deaths, either directly or indirectly, of fifteen kids.
He couldn’t escape the things that hunted him in the dark, couldn’t escape the voices that whispered when he closed his eyes.
Haymitch Abernathy was nineteen years old, and when he could sleep at all, it was with the lights on and a knife under his pillow.
54
Aaron Schofeld was eighteen and Seam through and through, with black hair, gray eyes, and olive skin. He was a looker, better fed and stronger than even the Merchant kids Haymitch had been responsible for during the past few Games. The kid stood out, even in comparison to the Careers that year, for all that they didn’t want him in their pack. For the first time in a long while, Haymitch felt hope rise up inside.
That hope grew stronger, though horror-tainted, once he talked to the kid about his strategy: Aaron Schofeld had a wife and child back home.
His wife was nineteen; the kid, a girl, was born just after the reaping the year before. Aaron had dropped out of school, lied about his age, and gone into the mines to feed his young family. Everyone looked the other way. No one wanted to be responsible for them starving to death even if they all privately thought they were damned fools to let themselves get in that situation in the first place or stay in it once they were there. Not while one of them was still eligible for the reaping.
With the help of Mags from Four and Woof from Eight, Haymitch and Aaron worked on the sympathy angle and actually managed to gain a few sponsors, but it wasn’t enough. Aaron made it to the final three, but no one survives being all but torn in half by a tiger, muttation or otherwise.
Almost as soon as he finished packing the body in ice to await transport back to the kid’s widow, Haymitch received word to report to Remake to get ready for a “date,” the first of four that year.
On the way back home after the Games, unable to sleep at all, unable to escape the ghosts, Haymitch wandered through the train. His wandering stopped when he discovered the bar car.
55
A pep talk on the train to the Capitol, a week in training, and both his kids died in the bloodbath within fifteen minutes of each other. Half an hour after that, Haymitch was in the Training Center bar with Chaff from District Eleven. One of Chaff’s kids had stepped off his platform ten seconds before the gong, the other only lasted five minutes longer than Haymitch’s girl.
Around lunchtime, Snow’s Coordinator of Victor Affairs tracked Haymitch down to give him his schedule for the week, telling him that scheduling of further appointments would depend on the progress of the Games. Haymitch stared at the man for a moment before dissolving into laughter. Chaff joined in; Snow’s assistant did not.
Shooting Haymitch a sour look, the Coordinator for Victor Affairs advised him, “You’re due in Remake in half an hour.” Haymitch watched him walk away. Chaff watched Haymitch.
When he noticed, Haymitch downed another shot and asked, “What is that guy’s name, anyway?” Chaff just snorted and refilled Haymitch’s glass from the bottle the bartender had left them a good hour before.
“How would I know?” He cheerfully waved his stump at Haymitch. “Nobody’s interested in any affairs with this victor.” Haymitch laughed at the joke, too loud and too long, until tears leaked from his eyes. He had no idea if those tears were from the laughter or from the despair.
*
After that, he and Chaff spent most of their free time together in either the Training Center bar or in the victors’ lounge. Chaff had more free time than Haymitch overall, but Haymitch still kept up with him, shot for shot. It made those appointments he had to keep more bearable, at least for him. Apparently, though, not all of his patrons felt the same way.
About a week into the Games, Snow called Haymitch to his office. He left him cooling his heels in his outer office for an hour or so before calling him into the inner sanctum, and then left him standing on the carpet in front of his desk for another ten minutes before looking up from his paperwork.
“Ah, Mr. Abernathy.” Snow smiled a crocodile smile at Haymitch, full of bloody teeth. “That was bad luck with your tributes this year.” Haymitch clenched his jaw to keep from rising to the bait. Eventually, Snow pushed back his chair and stood, then came around the desk and leaned against the edge of it, not quite in Haymitch’s personal space. “I have had some complaints about you.” Haymitch held the man’s gaze; he didn’t back down, wondering what would happen if he reached up and choked the son of a bitch. He figured it would amount to suicide-by-Peacekeeper, but maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
When Haymitch didn’t say anything, Snow sighed and continued. “No more drinking, Mr. Abernathy. Your patrons aren’t interested in babysitting a boy too drunk to carry on a conversation.” His words stung, but Haymitch bit back the snappy retort that automatically rose to his lips. He didn’t want to give Snow the satisfaction of knowing he’d gotten to him.
“You are dismissed, Mr. Abernathy.”
*
Three weeks, two dead kids, and five patrons later, Haymitch arrived home to the news that a train carrying a large shipment of coal to District Three had jumped the tracks while crossing a hundred-foot-high bridge over a river gorge. The shipment was unrecoverable. Mine quotas, already high enough that most shifts were ten-hour days, had been doubled to cover the shortfall.
56
Blonde-haired and blue-eyed Maria Donner died at the Cornucopia. The boy, Luke Tanner, lived almost until the end, but without any help from Haymitch. When Maria died, younger sister to Maysilee and Maribelle, Haymitch gave up. He didn’t stop drinking once he started, didn’t notice who won the Games. It didn’t matter. No one ever really won. Not even the kids from the Career districts.
There were fewer patrons that year, but not so few as to make much difference to Haymitch, although he did put in an effort to stay more or less sober while he was with them. He didn’t want to go home to find more shit piled on his district because he’d pissed off Snow again. The kid from Four that Snow started with the year before picked up the slack.
Haymitch Abernathy was twenty-two years old, but he felt more like ninety.
57 - 63
One lived for three days, the other for ten. A kid from Five won the 57th Games a week later.
There were fewer patrons once Haymitch’s part in the Games ended that year, but the ones that he did have were… not so nice. There were several trips to Remake and one to a hospital when a patron didn’t take too kindly to something Haymitch said.
The years blurred together and so did the Games. The 58th. The 59th. Haymitch phoned it in. Every year, two kids, some with hope in their eyes, some with none, and always the knowledge that Haymitch couldn’t bring more than one of them home alive. Eventually, after so many years and so many dead kids, even that faint hope died.
A girl from Eight, petite and pretty and who looked almost like she could have come from the Seam, won the 60th Hunger Games. Her name was Cecelia and Haymitch couldn’t look her in the eye, knowing as he did what she was headed for.
The 61st Games came and went and Haymitch took two more kids home in body bags.
A girl from Two won the 62nd Games by tearing a boy’s throat out with her teeth. Haymitch watched it happen while some Capitol slub who insisted on having the Games on while they fucked sucked at Haymitch’s throat. The man was a little offended when Haymitch laughed.
The 63rd Games were almost entirely forgettable, won by a volunteer from District One. Haymitch was out early, as was Chaff, and so once more they spent most of their free time drinking and making up stories.
But in all those years Haymitch never got so drunk that he couldn’t perform.
64
“And I’m out.” Haymitch pulled off his headset and hooked it on the edge of his console. Lyme glanced over at him and then at the clock over the door. Ten-thirty in the morning on opening day, not quite a record, not for Twelve, but still, his kids were out of it fast. Meeting Lyme’s eyes, he shrugged and stood up from his chair, popping his back as he did so. Somewhere mid-stretch, he noticed the new girl watching him with unreadable blue eyes.
“What are you looking at, sweetheart?” Rather than answer him, she stared at him a moment longer before turning back to her monitors.
“That’s Cashmere,” Mags said as she walked past him with a cup of coffee, strong and black, from the smell of it. “Why don’t you join me, Haymitch?” Frowning, he glanced down at Chaff in the chair beside the one he’d just abandoned.
“Hell if I know what she wants,” Chaff said. “She’s Mags.” With another shrug, Haymitch walked over to the District Four station.
“Something wrong?” he asked. Mags pushed out the chair beside her and patted the seat.
“Just a heads up, boy,” she said once he was sitting beside her. “Victor Affairs showed some of the younger victors a tape last night.” Haymitch felt the blood rush to his face and wished he could do something to stop it. He hadn’t blushed in years. All of a sudden feeling parched, his fingers itched to pull the flask from his vest pocket. “Nothing for you to be embarrassed about. Apparently, President Snow is using you as an example. Cashmere didn’t tell me what was on that tape, just that they showed it to her and Enobaria as a warning.” Haymitch snorted.
“Well, if that’s all…” He laughed, but there was nothing of amusement in the sound.
*
Haymitch rolled onto his back and pulled the sheet up to cover them both as Honoria Stoker switched on the TV. Immediately, the sounds of the Hunger Games - the rousing music of this year’s soundtrack, the talking heads with their running commentary - filled the room and he did his best to tune it out. But of course Honoria wanted to talk about the Games.
“Oh, look. There’s Gloss.” There was a brief flare of light followed by the scent of sweet smoke and he resisted the urge to cough.
Staring at the ceiling, Haymitch dutifully asked, “Gloss?” He vaguely remembered something about the male tribute from District One during training. The smoke was already starting to get to him and he pushed the sheet down before he swung his legs over the side of the bed.
“He’s Cashmere’s brother. I hear he’s favored to win this year.” Honoria stroked cool fingers down Haymitch’s spine. “I do so hope he does. I called in a gift for him just before you arrived. If he uses it properly, then I may be able to have them as a matched set next year.”
Haymitch barely made it to the bathroom, slamming the door shut with a little too much force, before he lost everything in his stomach. With shaking hands, he flushed the mess away, wishing he could follow it down.
Fugue
65
Haymitch
He watched the last few days of the 65th Hunger Games from the relative comfort of an overstuffed leather couch in the victors’ lounge. He’d really thought that maybe this year might be different. Both of his kids looked relatively well-fed and strong, both of them were smart, and both of them were over fifteen. They survived for nearly ten days before the boy died in a mutt attack. The girl lived a bit longer before she fell to Mags’ junior menace.
The boy from Four was only fourteen, gangly as hell, but all lethal grace once someone sent him a golden trident. No one expected him to live, being so young, but once he had that trident in his hands, paired with a net he wove from the same mutt vines that killed Haymitch’s boy, no one could stop young Finnick Odair.
Drinking straight from the bottle, occasionally sharing it with Chaff, Haymitch looked at the boy after his final kill, at his wild, feral eyes, his half-grown body and a face any girl might envy, and told Chaff, “Kid doesn’t stand a chance.”
Finnick
Finnick stared at the body on the ground, the cannon’s boom echoing in his head. He was shaking. He knew that he was bleeding, that the gash in his side from Haestia’s sword was deep, maybe even deep enough to kill him, but he couldn’t move. He could barely breathe. Sweat trickled into his left eye and he blinked it away.
The wind picked up, whipping his hair into his eyes to blind him. A heavy droning sound reverberated against his eardrums, vibrating through the ground at his feet. He felt lightheaded, but he had no idea if it was from blood loss or something else. Shock, maybe. He heard something behind him and spun, trident in hand, ready to attack. He couldn’t use the net tangled around Haestia’s arms, or he would have readied it to throw at whoever this new enemy was.
There was no one there. But then something caught his eye and he looked up. And up. When his brain finally made the connection, he lunged. No claw for him; Finnick gripped the bottom rung of the ladder dangling from the hovercraft above as dust and dirt blinded him. The electrical charge froze him in place. Although his eyes were wide open, his vision faded as the hovercraft rose.
*
“It’s almost time for you to go home, boy.”
Finnick couldn’t feel his hands. He knew that his fingers maintained a death grip around his trident, but he couldn’t feel it. Why couldn’t he feel it? He blinked and raised his free hand to wipe at the sweat and blood that clouded his eyes. “Mags?” he choked out. He couldn’t trust that what he saw and heard was real.
He felt it, though, when she pried the trident from his hand. Felt it when she gently stroked the hair from his eyes. “It’s over, child. Rest now.” Finnick closed his eyes and drifted away.
66
Haymitch
It was the first day of training and after sending his kids off, Haymitch headed for Mentor Central and the victors’ lounge. When he arrived, he took one look at the boy sprawled across the length of the couch, feet on one arm and head resting on the other, and told him, “No kids allowed.” Scowling, he shoved the boy’s feet to the floor.
“I’m not a kid. I’m a victor and this is the victors’ lounge.”
Dropping into the newly cleared space, Haymitch began, “You’re a kid and-”
“Haymitch.” Mags cut him off. “Leave the boy alone.” Her tone was mild, but beneath it was steel. “He has every right to be here, and he’s better off here than with Snow.” Haymitch couldn’t argue that.
Pulling his flask from his inside vest pocket, he settled back into his corner of the couch. Finnick shifted to put a bit of space between them, dividing his attention warily between Haymitch and the television.
*
The second day of training, right after lunch, Haymitch got word that his boy had picked a fight with the boy from Two, resulting in two broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a broken collarbone. It had been years since a scuffle between tributes before the Games had ended with anything more serious than a few cuts and bruises.
The boy from Two was fine once his shoulder and arm were put back to rights; the boy from Twelve ended up in a hospital overnight, paid for by fines levied against his district. They repaired his broken bones and released him the following day. He missed his chance to perform for the Gamemakers and received a score of zero for training. Haymitch tried to spin the pre-Games fight into something that might attract sponsors, but his attempts failed.
Between the girl who was afraid of her own shadow and the idiot boy, Haymitch seriously thought about telling them both the best strategy would be to step off their plates before the end of the countdown. In the end, the girl just missed being in the final eight. The Career pack, led by the boy from Two, hunted down Haymitch’s boy before the end of the first day. It took him a long time to die. The ratings in the Capitol soared.
Haymitch had three patrons that year.
He started drinking in earnest the moment he boarded the train for home. He somehow managed to deliver his two dead kids to their families and make it back to his house in the Victor’s Village where he did his level best to die of alcohol poisoning.
He failed at that, too.
Finnick
Too young to be a mentor, Finnick planted himself in the victors’ lounge the year after he was crowned. He didn’t know anyone but Mags and Alisdair, the other mentor for the 66th Games, and they were both busy. He would have liked to be outside, but he didn’t want to be around all those people staring at him, whispering behind his back, or shouting his name and wanting him to sign autographs or take pictures with them. It made him feel weird, like he wasn’t himself anymore.
Other victors came and went through the lounge in the week leading up to the Games. Brutus from District Two taught him to play chess. He watched Cecelia from Eight sketch clothes in a little notepad she carried; when she saw him watching her, she had him name different animals and then she drew them in whimsical settings that made him laugh. Mags kept on him to do the homework the schoolmaster had sent; she ignored his protests, saying it was important that he continue with his education. After that, some of the other victors asked him about the lessons or, like Beetee, helped him when he got stuck on a math problem or the like. Finnick was pretty sure Mags had gotten on the others about his education, just like she’d gotten on him.
Not everyone wanted him there, like Cashmere and Gloss, sister and brother from District One. Finnick had killed the female from One during his Games; Cashmere was the girl’s mentor. Finnick was pretty sure she hated him, and the way she and Gloss sometimes stared at him just made him nervous. Chaff from Eleven and Haymitch from Twelve both pretty much ignored him, so long as he stayed out of their way. They weren’t unfriendly, or at least Chaff wasn’t, but they didn’t want a kid hanging around. Haymitch always seemed to have a bottle or a flask in his hand, although he never seemed to be drunk, at least not until after both of his kids were dead.
Once the Games began, airing twenty-four hours a day on the big TV in the corner of the victors’ lounge, Finnick couldn’t look away, no matter how much he wanted to. The Games that year tangled with his own Games in his nightmares. He woke screaming pretty much every time he fell asleep, but unlike back home, no one in the lounge seemed to find it unusual nor did it even seem to bother anyone.
For the first time since the hovercraft took him from the arena, Finnick started to believe that he wasn’t alone.
67
Haymitch
Year after year, it was always the same. Two kids with hope in their eyes, even when they tried to hide it with bluster and bravado or when it was overshadowed by fear, sent home by the Capitol in a body bag, leaving Haymitch to look their families in the eye and tell them how sorry he was. And he was sorry. That was the thing of it. He was sorry. Sorry that they were reaped. Sorry that they died. Sorry that he couldn’t do a damn thing to save them.
He started drinking on the train to the Capitol. Something to dull the edge of that knife twisting in his gut.
When he arrived in the Capitol, two hope-filled kids in tow, he received an invitation to a party at the home of Honoria Stoker following the Opening Ceremonies. Printed on familiar cream and blue stationary, it bore the presidential seal and the initials “CS.” Haymitch shook his head and tossed it in the trash.
It was a memorable party, although that had nothing to do with Honoria. After she dragged him off for a quickie before returning to mingle with her guests, Haymitch headed to the bar in the corner. While he waited for his drink, he leaned against the bar and surveyed the crowd; a mixture of Capitol citizens and victors, uniformed servants - some Avox, some not - slipped in between. He spotted Mags talking to a man Haymitch half-recognized and, drink in hand, he headed that way.
Mags introduced the man as Plutarch Heavensbee; Haymitch knew the name. The man was a Gamemaker whose star was on the rise. While his first instinct was to turn around and quickly head the other way, something in the man’s expression, the look in his eyes when he held out his hand for Haymitch to shake, made him stay.
The conversation that followed, with Mags and Heavensbee and Woof, who joined them a few minutes later, was the highlight of the evening. It started out innocently enough, a discussion of history, more than anything else, touching on the Dark Days and life before the Games, something which Mags and Woof were old enough to remember. But that conversation sparked an idea in Haymitch, something he intended to follow up on with Mags when they were someplace with fewer Capitol eyes and ears.
Who knew a stinking Gamemaker, of all people, could instill in him something resembling hope?
*
Although dawn was just around the corner, it was still dark outside when Haymitch got back to the Training Center from Honoria’s party. Pretty lit, though not so drunk that he couldn’t function, Haymitch was still dreaming about the possibility of a real future, even though he fully expected Mags to laugh at his ideas when he finally got the chance to talk to her in private.
Even better was the fact that Honoria had let him go without protest, having moved on to Gloss. Haymitch’s Capitol star was waning, something he wished had happened a hell of a lot sooner. Maybe next year, he wouldn’t have to be nice to anyone.
The lobby was dark when he passed through it; the only light came from a fixture in the far corner. He carefully wove his way through the tables and chairs in his path and passed the bar. He punched the call button on the elevator, and it was then that he heard what sounded like a choked off sob from the vicinity of the bar. Frowning, he walked back in that direction.
“Finnick?” The kid was huddled in a ball on the floor behind the bar. He was clearly trying to hide, but when he looked up at Haymitch, there was no hiding the livid marks on the left side of his face where someone had hit him, the beginnings of a black eye or the bite marks on his neck. “Shit.” Haymitch reached out a hand to help Finnick up, but the boy shied away. The elevator announced its arrival, but Haymitch ignored both it and the fear in Finnick’s eyes and hauled him up anyway, slinging one of Finnick’s arms over his shoulders and sliding his own arm around the boy’s waist.
“Let’s get you up to your floor and cleaned up.”
“No!” Haymitch looked into panicked green eyes. “I don’t want Mags to see me.” Haymitch felt a surge of rage and quickly masked his expression before Finnick could see it and somehow think that Haymitch was angry at him. That high he’d been feeling a few minutes earlier was nothing more than a memory.
“Alright. I’ll take you up to twelve instead.” He stabbed the call button again and the doors immediately opened. As soon as he and Finnick were inside, the boy pulled away from him.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what happened?” He sounded a little defiant and a lot scared. He wrapped his arms around his torso, eyes darting here and there but not lighting on anything for long. Haymitch pushed the brightly glowing twelve.
They stood in silence as the car rose, Haymitch looking at Finnick while Finnick’s gaze eventually rested on a spot on the floor. In the year since Haymitch had last seen him, the boy had filled out. When standing up straight, the kid had a good four inches on Haymitch’s own five feet ten, the promise of height in previously gangly limbs and lanky torso realized. But just then, the broad-shouldered, handsome boy stood pressed into a corner of the elevator trying to make himself look smaller.
As the elevator passed the eighth floor, Finnick finally looked up. He couldn’t quite meet Haymitch’s eyes, but he tried. Haymitch had to give the kid credit for that.
“You’re sixteen now, right?” Haymitch asked and Finnick nodded. With a snort, Haymitch continued, “I know exactly what happened.” He watched as confusion clouded those green eyes and the color drained from his face. “You think you’re the only one Snow ever sold?” The elevator doors opened onto the twelfth floor and Haymitch gave him a light shove when Finnick didn’t move right away; Finnick only made it about two steps before he fell to his knees, vomiting helplessly on the floor.
Haymitch knew all about that, too.
*
Staring out the window at the Capitol sunrise, Haymitch waited for someone in the District Four suites to pick up the phone; after the seventh ring, he was about to give up when Alisdair finally did.
“Get Mags,” Haymitch barked in lieu of a greeting. A moment later, she picked up the line.
“Hello? Who is this?”
“Mags, it’s Haymitch. Just wanted to let you know your boy is with me.” She let out a long and breathy sigh just before the sound cut off when she dropped the phone. Her voice was shaky when she spoke again.
“He’s safe then? He’s not hurt?” Haymitch couldn’t recall a time when Mags sounded so thoroughly rattled. He had to wonder just how much she knew of what had happened to Finnick the night before. Closing his eyes, he gripped the phone tighter; this was not the conversation he’d expected or ever wanted to have with Mags.
“I don’t think he needs a hospital, if that’s what you’re asking, but he might need a trip to Remake before he goes out in public.” There was a sharp intake of breath on her end followed by a rapid and angry stream of words Haymitch couldn’t understand. When there was no other response, he told her, “I brought him up here to twelve to get cleaned up. He didn’t want you to see him looking like… well, looking like he did.”
Her words were faint when she replied, “President Snow made it very clear that Finnick was to be told nothing.” Another pause as she blew her nose. “I’ve known that boy since the day he was born, Haymitch.” He heard the tears in her voice.
“Damn it. I didn’t tell you any of this to push the knife in any deeper.”
She snorted at that, and there was a little of her usual fire back in her voice when she said, “Just don’t leave him alone, Haymitch. Can you do that for me?”
Behind him, through the closed bedroom door, Haymitch heard Finnick’s voice, faint at first, but it quickly grew to something resembling a bitten off scream as Haymitch nodded, even though Mags couldn’t see it. He remembered his own first time.
The last thing Finnick needed just then was to be alone.
*
For the rest of the Games, the boy stayed with him during the days and Haymitch let him. There wasn’t anything either one of them could do about the nights when Snow had other plans, although Haymitch had more free time than Finnick. He could see the kid dying a little more inside each day and he did what he could; Finnick was about the only kid he could help, but at least he could do that.
He didn’t get the chance to talk to Mags about his ideas. She had too much on her mind, what with having a tribute who was a real contender that year, as well as what was happening with Finnick. It came down to Districts Four and Ten in the final showdown, so even though the boy from Ten won, Mags worked sponsors up to the bitter end and there was never an opportunity for that talk.
Once again, Haymitch delivered two dead kids to two grieving families and returned to his house to drink in the darkness.
It didn’t matter that it was bright daylight outside.
Finnick
Battered, bruised, and hurting in both body and pride, Finnick stumbled out of the car before the driver could do more than open the door for him. He yanked the Training Center door open and hurried through it, intent only on getting back to his room where he could wash away the stink of what had happened and his own fear. Halfway to the elevators, he thought of Mags and he began to shake. Changing course, he hid behind the bar. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. There was no way he could face Mags.
That was where Haymitch Abernathy found him. The man didn’t ask questions, said some things that made Finnick think that what happened after he left the party with that man was no surprise. When Finnick said he didn’t want Mags to see him like that, Haymitch took him up to the twelfth floor and let him shower there. He didn’t say anything about how long that shower lasted, either.
He hid out in Haymitch’s room, not touching anything but the chair in the corner where he sat until Haymitch and the others left for tribute training. He did his best not to think about the night before, but it was hard; when he caught a glimpse of his own face in a mirror once he thought it might finally be safe to sneak out, it all came flooding back. The crowd of people, the dancing, the drinks that kept replacing the ones he finished until his head swam, and through it all, Gaston Tyco, a man the same age as his own father and who stayed nearby no matter what Finnick did. He’d seemed okay, even made him laugh at some of the things he said when he’d answered questions about his own Games.
Finnick had been to Capitol parties before, so he didn’t think anything of it when Tyco invited him to another. He’d told Mags what he was doing and she’d said she’d see him in the morning. And then Tyco… Finnick had fought, but he was drunk, his reflexes shot, and in the end, the best he could do was to not cry.
His hand on the doorknob, Finnick abruptly turned and dashed into Haymitch’s bathroom to vomit into the sink.
*
When Finnick returned to his own room, successfully evading everyone he knew, he found a cream-colored envelope on his bed. Inside it was a note advising him of a meeting that afternoon with President Snow, instructing him to wait in the Training Center lobby for the car to pick him up. After staring at the note in his hands for a good minute, Finnick dropped it and went to his closet, rifling through it for something nice enough to wear to a meeting with the President of Panem. He’d spoken to President Snow several times since he became a victor, and the man had never been anything but kind to him; but this seemed different, more official.
It couldn’t hurt to take another shower.
*
Finnick blinked back tears and fought to regain his composure. “I don’t understand.” His voice was steady, so at least he had that, at least he didn’t fall completely apart. Mags knew? She knew? How could she know? Inside, he was screaming.
“Which part do you not understand, Mr. Odair?” Snow stared at him with one eyebrow raised and Finnick felt like the man could see right through him to the scared little boy who wished he’d never walked out of that arena. “The part about your new duties as a victor? Or…?”
“I don’t understand any of it.” Mags knew about Gaston Tyco, and, apparently, so did the President. She knew and she hadn’t said anything. Betrayed as Finnick felt over Snow’s pretending to be his friend these past few years, it was nothing compared to Mags. He loved Mags, and he thought that she cared about him. But she was a part of this? She knew that Finnick was going to have to “entertain patrons,” as Snow so politely put it, for the “foreseeable future?” He wished the ground would open beneath his feet and swallow him whole.
While Finnick was still reeling, Snow warned him there would be consequences if he didn’t cooperate, and then he showed him a tape and said that what happened to Haymitch Abernathy’s loved ones could just as easily happen to his own. He didn’t know what to think, didn’t know what to believe or who to trust.
Between being raped, learning that Mags knew it was going to happen, and Snow telling him that it was going to happen again, Finnick wanted nothing more than to curl up into a tiny ball and die.
But he couldn’t even do that for fear of what Snow would do to his family.
*
Deciding that there was one person he could trust, Finnick stuck with Haymitch Abernathy as much as he could for the rest of the Games. Haymitch never did ask any questions, nor did Finnick ask anything of Haymitch beyond just letting him stay. He and Chaff included Finnick when they sat around drinking and telling stories; Finnick didn’t join in, but he did watch and listen and gradually, the terrible knot of fear and self-loathing inside him began to loosen. They didn’t treat him any differently than they had before, except that maybe Haymitch treated him a little more like an equal than a kid. It helped.
He avoided Mags. He didn’t know what to say to her, didn’t know how to act around her anymore. And every time he had a “date” - there were nearly a dozen of them, and at least two of those hit the tabloids, before Jayce from Ten won - it got worse. It got worse because not only did Mags know what he was doing with all those people, but also, because of the reporters and photographers. His parents knew about it, too, and it didn’t matter that none of it was Finnick’s choice. No one back home would know that. They would believe whatever they saw about him on TV.
Finnick desperately missed his family, but he just as desperately did not want to go home.
68
Haymitch
Haymitch wasn’t required to attend any of the pre-Games parties the next time he was in the Capitol, but he went anyway. He hated the damned things, but they were still one of the best ways to round up sponsors, which were hard enough to come by for Twelve, so he couldn’t afford to stay in the Training Center and read. Or drink. But for the first time in years, the impulse to imbibe was more or less under control.
At Honoria Stoker’s party, he sought out Mags and told her he wanted to talk to her on the Training Center roof later that night. She didn’t ask any questions, but she did agree to meet him before Honoria spotted the two of them and called Mags away. As Mags left him, Haymitch’s gaze fell on Finnick in a heated embrace with an older woman at the edge of the dance floor. Feeling a little sick, Haymitch turned away. There was nothing he could do about it.
Not yet at least.
*
Mags was already on the roof when Haymitch got there, the wind whipping at her hair and the fabric of her long skirt as she leaned on the low wall surrounding the rooftop gardens, watching out over the city. Between the noise of a dozen wind chimes and the fountain burbling merrily away toward the center of the flowerbeds, no one should overhear them. Listening devices were hard to use in that environment. If they wanted to use them, they’d have to put the roof under a dome to keep out the wind, and for whatever reason, that was something they weren’t willing to do.
Joining Mags at the wall and keeping his voice low, Haymitch began, “After our talk last year, I got to thinking….” He talked for a good ten minutes, laying out his case, citing the rising quotas for coal and shrimp and cloth that they’d spoken of with Heavensbee the year before, and how they never seemed to go back down again. He mentioned the twenty-three dead kids, year after year, and how being that one kid who lived was, in a way, far worse. He pointed out that the only people who moved much between districts were the victors and how the government was used to those victors doing what they were told to do.
“Most of us have a measure of respect in our home districts.” He didn’t include himself in that number. “We could leverage that. It won’t be easy, but if we’re smart about it, if we take it slow and steady, we could make a change.”
Mags didn’t say anything right away, just continued looking out over the city; but he could see from her face, even in profile, that she was thinking about what he’d said. After who knew how long, she turned toward him, sweeping her hair from her eyes when the ever-present wind blew it over her face.
“Woof will join us,” she said and Haymitch nodded, his heart picking up its pace at the way she phrased it as a given, not only that Woof would join them, but that there was something there to join. “We need to keep it small, for now, and recruit more people only as we need them.” Mags smiled then and it was the most beautiful thing Haymitch had ever seen. “It’ll take a bit of time to properly plan a rebellion.”
*
That year, the Games flew by. There were no miracles. Haymitch’s kids still died. He still drank too much. Nothing at all had changed.
But everything had changed.
Finnick
Still too young to mentor, at least according to President Snow, Finnick entertained another dozen or so Capitol citizens to the backdrop of the 68th Games. Four of his patrons that year were not just rich, but high profile, too, so Finnick had to worry about what his family and friends back home thought about seeing him with these women and men. But if he was honest with himself, he knew what they thought.
They thought he was a slut. That he’d won his Games too young and the lifestyle of the Capitol, so different from that of the districts, had gone to his head. And no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t say anything to set them straight.
The only times he felt like himself anymore were the afternoons he spent with Haymitch. Even though everyone in Mentor Central knew what he was doing, even though he’d cleared things up with Mags and understood that she’d had no choice - none of them did - Haymitch was still the only one Finnick felt comfortable with. The older man even showed him a little bit of how to mentor while his district was still in the Games.
Finnick Odair spent his days in Mentor Central with his fellow victors, his nights with strangers, and he wanted to die.
But he was a victor. A survivor. And even as he wanted to die, he slowly began to learn how to live.
69
Haymitch
District Seven won the 69th Games. Haymitch’s kids never had a chance. Even after his district was out of the Games, both kids on the first day, he only had a couple of patrons, women he’d been with before. And he learned that the tape Snow showed Cashmere a couple of years earlier had become kind of a thing. Cashmere. Gloss. Finnick. But not last year’s victor, a kid from District Two. The Twos only rarely wound up as part of the circuit; Enobaria was the exception.
He wondered if the new victor, a sixteen-year-old girl whose looks were striking rather than pretty and who turned out to be downright vicious with an axe, would end up seeing that tape, too. He still didn’t know what was on it; he had never asked.
Finnick
Finnick stood on the stage at the reaping and watched as the kids climbed up the stairs to join him and the other District Four victors, just as he did every year, but that year, it was different. He wasn’t just a victor, he was now a mentor. Calleen Delmar was eighteen - the same age as Finnick - and a volunteer, trained as Finnick had never had the chance.
Calleen made it clear on the train to the Capitol that she wanted Finnick; he made it just as clear that that wasn’t going to happen. From that moment on, she ignored everything he said. He tried to switch tributes with Coral, his mentoring partner, but she refused on the grounds of District Four tradition: mentor-tribute pairs were comprised of opposite genders, because the powers that be back home thought it best to have a different perspective during that week before the Games began. Nothing Finnick said swayed her.
He wished Mags was there.
In addition to fighting with his tribute during that first week, Finnick had to keep two Capitol citizens happy. He was off the hook during the Games themselves, which was a pretty powerful incentive to keep his tribute alive, but he learned quickly - and Haymitch confirmed it - that there wasn’t all that much he could do to influence things once his tribute was inside the arena. The only thing he could do was solicit sponsors and, feeling sick at making promises he would later have to make good on, Finnick amassed quite a bit of money for District Four; but in the end, it didn’t matter.
Four was out of the Games within a week and Finnick ended up repaying the generosity of half a dozen sponsors before the closing ceremonies ended.
He wondered if it would ever get easier.
Johanna
The axe slipped from nerveless fingers to the bloody, muddy ground. Johanna Mason followed it down, landing on her knees, staring into a pair of light brown eyes. Dead eyes. She couldn’t have stopped the tears that leaked from her own if she’d tried, so she didn’t bother. Didn’t bother to stop the wracking sobs that followed, either.
A wind from above blew dirt and leaves into her face and she finally tore her gaze away from the girl from One who had once been favored to win. “What good is all your training now?” she asked. Of course, there was no answer.
Johanna watched the hovercraft descend. It stopped just above the tops of the trees and a portion of its belly slid back to allow a ladder to unfold. Whoever was flying that thing had damned good aim; all Johanna had to do was push back up to her feet and reach for it. Drawing on reserves of strength she didn’t know she had, she managed it.
What followed was a blur for years afterward. The memories of the four days between killing the last tribute and walking off that Capitol stage with a crown on her head returned to her little by little, and always at a bad time. She did remember Caesar Flickerman remarking that her family would be so proud of her, and she remembered thinking that no, they really wouldn’t, but they would be happy she was coming home.
She returned to District Seven with Blight and Burr and the knowledge that she would have to go back to the Capitol every year for the Games because District Seven finally had a female victor.
Johanna never wanted to see the Capitol again.
part 2
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 21,837
Betas: chelziebelle all the way through, and trovia on an early draft. Thank you, ladies! It's so much better for your efforts. ♥
Characters/Pairings: Haymitch Abernathy, Finnick Odair, Johanna Mason, Mags, Plutarch Heavensbee, Chaff; Johanna/Finnick, Haymitch/Johanna
Summary: Haymitch. Finnick. Johanna. They were so much stronger together...
Author's note: Written for deathmallow for the Hunger Games Spring Fling. Generally speaking, she wanted 1) anything Haymitch/Johanna, 2) Haymitch-Finnick-Johanna bonding during the Games over the years, and 3) Johanna visiting district 12 after the war. Okay, so it was supposed to be one of those things. I wrote all of the above. Oops.
--------------------
Madrigal
Solo
50
They pulled him from the arena with his guts hanging out, or they would have been had he not been holding them in with his own two hands. Even years later, he sometimes thought the only thing that really kept him alive was the electrical charge that froze his muscles in place while he dangled from the rescue ladder. He couldn’t have let his innards fall to the ground even if he tried.
If he’d known what was to come, he actually might have.
*
Haymitch woke in a Games-controlled Capitol hospital three days later. When he woke, he felt no pain. That came later, after the drugs wore off. Capitol medicine healed the wounds on the outside. The ones on the inside… Well.
*
A week to the day after they pulled him from the arena, President Snow crowned Haymitch Abernathy of District Twelve victor of the 50th Hunger Games. Winner of the Second Quarter Quell. Once crowned, the President turned him over to Caesar Flickerman.
For three hours, he alternated between watching the “highlights” of the Quell, most of which seemed to have something to do with him, and talking to Flickerman. Haymitch found it hard to believe that he was the only one who did anything interesting in the arena. But then, history was written by the victors, right? Or at least by those who controlled the victors.
Haymitch didn’t feel victorious. He didn’t feel like he’d won anything.
*
After the closing ceremonies came the parties. One after another. People screaming his name, wanting his autograph, wanting a photograph, wanting to hear his voice, wanting to touch him. His adoring fans.
He hated every minute of it.
The parties didn’t end until he boarded the train that would return him to Twelve. He suspected they didn’t end even then; the only thing that ended was his part in them. His Games-appointed mentor, who took far too much credit for Haymitch’s win, saw him to the station and waved him aboard the train. Haymitch just nodded when the man said he’d see him again in a few months for the Victory Tour. All he wanted was to go home.
Leaning his head against the window, Haymitch watched first his mentor and then the Capitol grow smaller and smaller until they faded from sight. He could breathe again. He fell asleep on that train, the first night since the nightmare of the arena ended that was free of the memories of the kids he’d murdered, of the nightmares in which he relived the horrible things he’d seen and done.
That night on the train was the last night Haymitch Abernathy slept the whole night through.
When he stepped off the train, he smelled the acrid stench of old smoke. Days old, but not yet so old that it was actually in the past. Under the coal and the wood, there was something sweet and bitter mingled with something flowery. His mother wasn’t there to greet him, nor his brother. And not his girl, either. He was a victor, the first one District Twelve had had since Ophelia McCoy, but the only one to welcome him home was his mother’s friend, Sae Vickers.
She didn’t have to say a word. Suddenly, he knew what that bitter-sweet smell was. He quickly learned that the other wasn’t just flowers.
From that day forward, Haymitch couldn’t bear the sight or smell of a rose.
51
The reaping the following year was hard, standing in front of everyone on that stage, knowing that there was every possibility that any kids who joined him there, who left the district on a Capitol-bound train wouldn’t be coming back. Not alive, anyway. He stared out over the crowd of faces, Seam and Merchant alike, and he wanted to puke.
The girl was seventeen and Merchant and he knew her from school, or at least he recognized her, which was bad enough. The boy was twelve and Seam and he looked far too much like Haymitch’s brother. A whiff of smoke and roses invaded his nostrils; he knew it was his imagination, but felt the bile rise in the back of his throat anyway, burning him, and choked it back down.
*
The train ride to the Capitol was awful. The boy, Canute Hutson, once he got over his shyness and some natural caution in his nature, treated it like some kind of holiday, running around, shouting about all the gadgets and geegaws. The girl, Sadie Crenshaw, chatted with their bubble-headed escort, Amelia Lucasta, about pretty much nothing; he suspected that was because the only things in Lucasta’s head really were bubbles. Sadie kept sending sidelong glances Haymitch’s way, as if asking him to rescue her.
He couldn’t rescue her. He couldn’t rescue the boy. He couldn’t rescue himself. So he just stared out the window at the blur of the scenery.
*
Under any other circumstances, and dealing with anything other than the Hunger Games, Haymitch might have found all the behind-the-scenes activity leading up to the Games themselves at least interesting. As it was, things moved too fast to really focus on any of it. It didn’t help that he had no idea what he was doing.
Canute and Sadie both looked to him for advice and guidance, and he knew he should be giving it to them, but he didn’t know what to say. He parroted some of what his borrowed mentor had told him about what to do during the Opening Ceremonies, about training, about impressing the Gamemakers, but it all felt wrong. Haymitch was pretty sure his Games-appointed mentor would have been a better choice than him.
He said as much to one of his fellow mentors when he reported to Mentor Central that first day of tribute training. A few minutes later, an older woman, tiny and red haired and maybe in her forties, showed up at his side and just started showing him around the control room. All the while she talked about how to assess his tributes’ strengths and weaknesses and how to use that to work up a strategy for them in the arena, or even earlier, in training, so as to not give away too much to the other kids about what they could and couldn’t do.
Haymitch listened to Mags - from District Four, victor of the 10th Hunger Games, and a deal older than he’d thought - learning everything he could from her and the other victors she pulled in to show him the ropes.
Canute and Sadie died anyway, in that order, the boy in the bloodbath and the girl with whom he’d shared a history class, back in the day, almost a week later when the girl from Mags’ district slit her throat in her sleep.
*
When both his tributes were gone, Haymitch learned more than he ever wanted to know about being a victor in the Capitol. A few hours after Sadie died, long enough for Haymitch to return to the Training Center for a shower and some sleep, broken and filled with nightmares though it was, Snow sent one of his assistants to fetch Haymitch to the President’s office for a meeting.
That meeting was brief. Snow told Haymitch what the rest of his duties would be while he was in the Capitol, since his tributes were gone. When Haymitch protested, feeling sick to his stomach and wondering what the rosy old bastard would do if he puked on his shoes, Snow had laughed. Haymitch focused on a bright spot of red at the corner of Snow’s mouth, contracting and stretching with the movement as the man began to speak.
“The choice is yours, Mr. Abernathy. You’re an adult now, after all. But if you decide to ignore your duties as I’ve laid them out for you,” the man smiled, red and raw, “well, I’m afraid there will be consequences.”
Haymitch remembered the sight of his burned out home, smoke still rising from the ashes. His ma, his brother, sweet Connie who he’d planned to marry one day, none of them were there anymore, planted in the ground two days before he came back from his Games. There hadn’t even been any reason for Connie to be there, when that fire broke out. Hadn’t been any good reason for that fire to break out at all.
The stench of cooked meat and roses from that day filled his nose and his head as he stared at that bit of red at the corner of the President’s mouth. The President was still speaking when Haymitch spewed all over his shoes and he didn’t have to wonder anymore what Snow might do.
Raising one eyebrow, Snow stopped talking. He handed Haymitch the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit coat. “If you’re quite finished, Mr. Abernathy…”
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Haymitch looked up at the President. “I won’t do it. I ain’t no whore.” He felt cold and scared and about six years old, but then he supposed if he were really only six, Snow wouldn’t be talking about using him like those hollow-eyed women and girls back home who kept the damn Peacekeepers happy for a few extra coins to buy their kids some bread. “And it ain’t like you can hurt my family to make me do whatever it is you want.”
Snow cocked his head to the side and stared at Haymitch long enough for Haymitch to become hyper aware of the vomit on the floor and on the man’s expensive shoes. “No, Mr. Abernathy,” he said in that smooth Capitol voice of his, “but you do have friends. And the people of your district would feel it keenly if even one shipment of grain were to be lost to a railway accident or perhaps to a bit of mold.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“As I said, Mr. Abernathy. The choice is yours.”
52
Another year. Another reaping. Two more kids dead within two days of each other, but neither one of them in the bloodbath. In a way, that was almost worse. Crushed hope tasted like ash in his mouth.
When the kids were gone, the workout regimen, two hours in the Training Center gym every day to keep him healthy and in shape, and the “special engagements” began. There were more of them than the year before, half a dozen maybe. All of them older than Haymitch, but a couple of them not too. He tried to pretend with the younger ones that it was just a date, but it didn’t work all that well. He couldn’t forget that he had no real choice, no matter what that bastard Snow said; if he didn’t perform, his friends or his district would suffer for it. And always in the back of his mind was that smoking example of just how bad those “consequences” would be.
One special engagement stood out over the others. Drusilla Lovage loved the opera and she loved the Hunger Games. She claimed that Haymitch Abernathy was the most refreshing thing to come out of the arena in years.
Haymitch didn’t have many sponsors during his Games, not in the beginning, anyway. Not until he started to stand out from the crowd of other kids. Half of them died at the Cornucopia, but even so, that left twenty-four kids, Haymitch among them. As the field thinned, the money began to flow, as though the sheer number of tributes had blocked the flow of sponsors’ gifts.
Sometime during the Quell, Drusilla noticed Haymitch and saw something in him that she liked. She sent him a first aid kit that he shared with Maysilee, his district partner, as well as a hunting knife that he used with horrifying efficiency in his effort to survive.
And when it was over, and Haymitch alone was still alive, Drusilla contacted Snow’s Coordinator of Victor Affairs to collect her own form of payment. As she told Haymitch in her pretentious Capitol accents, “I would have sent for you last year, dear, but my husband fell ill and I couldn’t leave his side.”
Haymitch didn’t understand how these people could even live with themselves. Wastes of oxygen, all of them.
Drusilla took him, all polished and pretty, to the opera, something she called a madrigal. Haymitch was surprised to discover that he didn’t hate it. He didn’t understand most of it and didn’t care to, but if he listened to it with the notion that the voices themselves were instruments, it was tolerable. And there wasn’t much in the way of actual instruments involved, which made pretending that much easier and the performance itself that much more memorable.
It started out with just one voice. That lasted for a bit, and then a second joined in and a third, finally ending with the first and the last when the second one faded away.
It was something Haymitch never forgot, so maybe it was safe to say that, rather than not hating it, he might actually have liked it, if not for the circumstances. The memory of that madrigal, the way their voices blended together into something stronger than any of them were when they were apart, was the only decent thing he took away with him when he left the Capitol for his cold and empty house.
53
Haymitch was nineteen for the 53rd Annual Hunger Games. By the time they were over and he could return to his house in Twelve’s Victor’s Village - he’d never call it home - he reckoned that he was responsible for the deaths, either directly or indirectly, of fifteen kids.
He couldn’t escape the things that hunted him in the dark, couldn’t escape the voices that whispered when he closed his eyes.
Haymitch Abernathy was nineteen years old, and when he could sleep at all, it was with the lights on and a knife under his pillow.
54
Aaron Schofeld was eighteen and Seam through and through, with black hair, gray eyes, and olive skin. He was a looker, better fed and stronger than even the Merchant kids Haymitch had been responsible for during the past few Games. The kid stood out, even in comparison to the Careers that year, for all that they didn’t want him in their pack. For the first time in a long while, Haymitch felt hope rise up inside.
That hope grew stronger, though horror-tainted, once he talked to the kid about his strategy: Aaron Schofeld had a wife and child back home.
His wife was nineteen; the kid, a girl, was born just after the reaping the year before. Aaron had dropped out of school, lied about his age, and gone into the mines to feed his young family. Everyone looked the other way. No one wanted to be responsible for them starving to death even if they all privately thought they were damned fools to let themselves get in that situation in the first place or stay in it once they were there. Not while one of them was still eligible for the reaping.
With the help of Mags from Four and Woof from Eight, Haymitch and Aaron worked on the sympathy angle and actually managed to gain a few sponsors, but it wasn’t enough. Aaron made it to the final three, but no one survives being all but torn in half by a tiger, muttation or otherwise.
Almost as soon as he finished packing the body in ice to await transport back to the kid’s widow, Haymitch received word to report to Remake to get ready for a “date,” the first of four that year.
On the way back home after the Games, unable to sleep at all, unable to escape the ghosts, Haymitch wandered through the train. His wandering stopped when he discovered the bar car.
55
A pep talk on the train to the Capitol, a week in training, and both his kids died in the bloodbath within fifteen minutes of each other. Half an hour after that, Haymitch was in the Training Center bar with Chaff from District Eleven. One of Chaff’s kids had stepped off his platform ten seconds before the gong, the other only lasted five minutes longer than Haymitch’s girl.
Around lunchtime, Snow’s Coordinator of Victor Affairs tracked Haymitch down to give him his schedule for the week, telling him that scheduling of further appointments would depend on the progress of the Games. Haymitch stared at the man for a moment before dissolving into laughter. Chaff joined in; Snow’s assistant did not.
Shooting Haymitch a sour look, the Coordinator for Victor Affairs advised him, “You’re due in Remake in half an hour.” Haymitch watched him walk away. Chaff watched Haymitch.
When he noticed, Haymitch downed another shot and asked, “What is that guy’s name, anyway?” Chaff just snorted and refilled Haymitch’s glass from the bottle the bartender had left them a good hour before.
“How would I know?” He cheerfully waved his stump at Haymitch. “Nobody’s interested in any affairs with this victor.” Haymitch laughed at the joke, too loud and too long, until tears leaked from his eyes. He had no idea if those tears were from the laughter or from the despair.
*
After that, he and Chaff spent most of their free time together in either the Training Center bar or in the victors’ lounge. Chaff had more free time than Haymitch overall, but Haymitch still kept up with him, shot for shot. It made those appointments he had to keep more bearable, at least for him. Apparently, though, not all of his patrons felt the same way.
About a week into the Games, Snow called Haymitch to his office. He left him cooling his heels in his outer office for an hour or so before calling him into the inner sanctum, and then left him standing on the carpet in front of his desk for another ten minutes before looking up from his paperwork.
“Ah, Mr. Abernathy.” Snow smiled a crocodile smile at Haymitch, full of bloody teeth. “That was bad luck with your tributes this year.” Haymitch clenched his jaw to keep from rising to the bait. Eventually, Snow pushed back his chair and stood, then came around the desk and leaned against the edge of it, not quite in Haymitch’s personal space. “I have had some complaints about you.” Haymitch held the man’s gaze; he didn’t back down, wondering what would happen if he reached up and choked the son of a bitch. He figured it would amount to suicide-by-Peacekeeper, but maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
When Haymitch didn’t say anything, Snow sighed and continued. “No more drinking, Mr. Abernathy. Your patrons aren’t interested in babysitting a boy too drunk to carry on a conversation.” His words stung, but Haymitch bit back the snappy retort that automatically rose to his lips. He didn’t want to give Snow the satisfaction of knowing he’d gotten to him.
“You are dismissed, Mr. Abernathy.”
*
Three weeks, two dead kids, and five patrons later, Haymitch arrived home to the news that a train carrying a large shipment of coal to District Three had jumped the tracks while crossing a hundred-foot-high bridge over a river gorge. The shipment was unrecoverable. Mine quotas, already high enough that most shifts were ten-hour days, had been doubled to cover the shortfall.
56
Blonde-haired and blue-eyed Maria Donner died at the Cornucopia. The boy, Luke Tanner, lived almost until the end, but without any help from Haymitch. When Maria died, younger sister to Maysilee and Maribelle, Haymitch gave up. He didn’t stop drinking once he started, didn’t notice who won the Games. It didn’t matter. No one ever really won. Not even the kids from the Career districts.
There were fewer patrons that year, but not so few as to make much difference to Haymitch, although he did put in an effort to stay more or less sober while he was with them. He didn’t want to go home to find more shit piled on his district because he’d pissed off Snow again. The kid from Four that Snow started with the year before picked up the slack.
Haymitch Abernathy was twenty-two years old, but he felt more like ninety.
57 - 63
One lived for three days, the other for ten. A kid from Five won the 57th Games a week later.
There were fewer patrons once Haymitch’s part in the Games ended that year, but the ones that he did have were… not so nice. There were several trips to Remake and one to a hospital when a patron didn’t take too kindly to something Haymitch said.
The years blurred together and so did the Games. The 58th. The 59th. Haymitch phoned it in. Every year, two kids, some with hope in their eyes, some with none, and always the knowledge that Haymitch couldn’t bring more than one of them home alive. Eventually, after so many years and so many dead kids, even that faint hope died.
A girl from Eight, petite and pretty and who looked almost like she could have come from the Seam, won the 60th Hunger Games. Her name was Cecelia and Haymitch couldn’t look her in the eye, knowing as he did what she was headed for.
The 61st Games came and went and Haymitch took two more kids home in body bags.
A girl from Two won the 62nd Games by tearing a boy’s throat out with her teeth. Haymitch watched it happen while some Capitol slub who insisted on having the Games on while they fucked sucked at Haymitch’s throat. The man was a little offended when Haymitch laughed.
The 63rd Games were almost entirely forgettable, won by a volunteer from District One. Haymitch was out early, as was Chaff, and so once more they spent most of their free time drinking and making up stories.
But in all those years Haymitch never got so drunk that he couldn’t perform.
64
“And I’m out.” Haymitch pulled off his headset and hooked it on the edge of his console. Lyme glanced over at him and then at the clock over the door. Ten-thirty in the morning on opening day, not quite a record, not for Twelve, but still, his kids were out of it fast. Meeting Lyme’s eyes, he shrugged and stood up from his chair, popping his back as he did so. Somewhere mid-stretch, he noticed the new girl watching him with unreadable blue eyes.
“What are you looking at, sweetheart?” Rather than answer him, she stared at him a moment longer before turning back to her monitors.
“That’s Cashmere,” Mags said as she walked past him with a cup of coffee, strong and black, from the smell of it. “Why don’t you join me, Haymitch?” Frowning, he glanced down at Chaff in the chair beside the one he’d just abandoned.
“Hell if I know what she wants,” Chaff said. “She’s Mags.” With another shrug, Haymitch walked over to the District Four station.
“Something wrong?” he asked. Mags pushed out the chair beside her and patted the seat.
“Just a heads up, boy,” she said once he was sitting beside her. “Victor Affairs showed some of the younger victors a tape last night.” Haymitch felt the blood rush to his face and wished he could do something to stop it. He hadn’t blushed in years. All of a sudden feeling parched, his fingers itched to pull the flask from his vest pocket. “Nothing for you to be embarrassed about. Apparently, President Snow is using you as an example. Cashmere didn’t tell me what was on that tape, just that they showed it to her and Enobaria as a warning.” Haymitch snorted.
“Well, if that’s all…” He laughed, but there was nothing of amusement in the sound.
*
Haymitch rolled onto his back and pulled the sheet up to cover them both as Honoria Stoker switched on the TV. Immediately, the sounds of the Hunger Games - the rousing music of this year’s soundtrack, the talking heads with their running commentary - filled the room and he did his best to tune it out. But of course Honoria wanted to talk about the Games.
“Oh, look. There’s Gloss.” There was a brief flare of light followed by the scent of sweet smoke and he resisted the urge to cough.
Staring at the ceiling, Haymitch dutifully asked, “Gloss?” He vaguely remembered something about the male tribute from District One during training. The smoke was already starting to get to him and he pushed the sheet down before he swung his legs over the side of the bed.
“He’s Cashmere’s brother. I hear he’s favored to win this year.” Honoria stroked cool fingers down Haymitch’s spine. “I do so hope he does. I called in a gift for him just before you arrived. If he uses it properly, then I may be able to have them as a matched set next year.”
Haymitch barely made it to the bathroom, slamming the door shut with a little too much force, before he lost everything in his stomach. With shaking hands, he flushed the mess away, wishing he could follow it down.
Fugue
65
Haymitch
He watched the last few days of the 65th Hunger Games from the relative comfort of an overstuffed leather couch in the victors’ lounge. He’d really thought that maybe this year might be different. Both of his kids looked relatively well-fed and strong, both of them were smart, and both of them were over fifteen. They survived for nearly ten days before the boy died in a mutt attack. The girl lived a bit longer before she fell to Mags’ junior menace.
The boy from Four was only fourteen, gangly as hell, but all lethal grace once someone sent him a golden trident. No one expected him to live, being so young, but once he had that trident in his hands, paired with a net he wove from the same mutt vines that killed Haymitch’s boy, no one could stop young Finnick Odair.
Drinking straight from the bottle, occasionally sharing it with Chaff, Haymitch looked at the boy after his final kill, at his wild, feral eyes, his half-grown body and a face any girl might envy, and told Chaff, “Kid doesn’t stand a chance.”
Finnick
Finnick stared at the body on the ground, the cannon’s boom echoing in his head. He was shaking. He knew that he was bleeding, that the gash in his side from Haestia’s sword was deep, maybe even deep enough to kill him, but he couldn’t move. He could barely breathe. Sweat trickled into his left eye and he blinked it away.
The wind picked up, whipping his hair into his eyes to blind him. A heavy droning sound reverberated against his eardrums, vibrating through the ground at his feet. He felt lightheaded, but he had no idea if it was from blood loss or something else. Shock, maybe. He heard something behind him and spun, trident in hand, ready to attack. He couldn’t use the net tangled around Haestia’s arms, or he would have readied it to throw at whoever this new enemy was.
There was no one there. But then something caught his eye and he looked up. And up. When his brain finally made the connection, he lunged. No claw for him; Finnick gripped the bottom rung of the ladder dangling from the hovercraft above as dust and dirt blinded him. The electrical charge froze him in place. Although his eyes were wide open, his vision faded as the hovercraft rose.
*
“It’s almost time for you to go home, boy.”
Finnick couldn’t feel his hands. He knew that his fingers maintained a death grip around his trident, but he couldn’t feel it. Why couldn’t he feel it? He blinked and raised his free hand to wipe at the sweat and blood that clouded his eyes. “Mags?” he choked out. He couldn’t trust that what he saw and heard was real.
He felt it, though, when she pried the trident from his hand. Felt it when she gently stroked the hair from his eyes. “It’s over, child. Rest now.” Finnick closed his eyes and drifted away.
66
Haymitch
It was the first day of training and after sending his kids off, Haymitch headed for Mentor Central and the victors’ lounge. When he arrived, he took one look at the boy sprawled across the length of the couch, feet on one arm and head resting on the other, and told him, “No kids allowed.” Scowling, he shoved the boy’s feet to the floor.
“I’m not a kid. I’m a victor and this is the victors’ lounge.”
Dropping into the newly cleared space, Haymitch began, “You’re a kid and-”
“Haymitch.” Mags cut him off. “Leave the boy alone.” Her tone was mild, but beneath it was steel. “He has every right to be here, and he’s better off here than with Snow.” Haymitch couldn’t argue that.
Pulling his flask from his inside vest pocket, he settled back into his corner of the couch. Finnick shifted to put a bit of space between them, dividing his attention warily between Haymitch and the television.
*
The second day of training, right after lunch, Haymitch got word that his boy had picked a fight with the boy from Two, resulting in two broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a broken collarbone. It had been years since a scuffle between tributes before the Games had ended with anything more serious than a few cuts and bruises.
The boy from Two was fine once his shoulder and arm were put back to rights; the boy from Twelve ended up in a hospital overnight, paid for by fines levied against his district. They repaired his broken bones and released him the following day. He missed his chance to perform for the Gamemakers and received a score of zero for training. Haymitch tried to spin the pre-Games fight into something that might attract sponsors, but his attempts failed.
Between the girl who was afraid of her own shadow and the idiot boy, Haymitch seriously thought about telling them both the best strategy would be to step off their plates before the end of the countdown. In the end, the girl just missed being in the final eight. The Career pack, led by the boy from Two, hunted down Haymitch’s boy before the end of the first day. It took him a long time to die. The ratings in the Capitol soared.
Haymitch had three patrons that year.
He started drinking in earnest the moment he boarded the train for home. He somehow managed to deliver his two dead kids to their families and make it back to his house in the Victor’s Village where he did his level best to die of alcohol poisoning.
He failed at that, too.
Finnick
Too young to be a mentor, Finnick planted himself in the victors’ lounge the year after he was crowned. He didn’t know anyone but Mags and Alisdair, the other mentor for the 66th Games, and they were both busy. He would have liked to be outside, but he didn’t want to be around all those people staring at him, whispering behind his back, or shouting his name and wanting him to sign autographs or take pictures with them. It made him feel weird, like he wasn’t himself anymore.
Other victors came and went through the lounge in the week leading up to the Games. Brutus from District Two taught him to play chess. He watched Cecelia from Eight sketch clothes in a little notepad she carried; when she saw him watching her, she had him name different animals and then she drew them in whimsical settings that made him laugh. Mags kept on him to do the homework the schoolmaster had sent; she ignored his protests, saying it was important that he continue with his education. After that, some of the other victors asked him about the lessons or, like Beetee, helped him when he got stuck on a math problem or the like. Finnick was pretty sure Mags had gotten on the others about his education, just like she’d gotten on him.
Not everyone wanted him there, like Cashmere and Gloss, sister and brother from District One. Finnick had killed the female from One during his Games; Cashmere was the girl’s mentor. Finnick was pretty sure she hated him, and the way she and Gloss sometimes stared at him just made him nervous. Chaff from Eleven and Haymitch from Twelve both pretty much ignored him, so long as he stayed out of their way. They weren’t unfriendly, or at least Chaff wasn’t, but they didn’t want a kid hanging around. Haymitch always seemed to have a bottle or a flask in his hand, although he never seemed to be drunk, at least not until after both of his kids were dead.
Once the Games began, airing twenty-four hours a day on the big TV in the corner of the victors’ lounge, Finnick couldn’t look away, no matter how much he wanted to. The Games that year tangled with his own Games in his nightmares. He woke screaming pretty much every time he fell asleep, but unlike back home, no one in the lounge seemed to find it unusual nor did it even seem to bother anyone.
For the first time since the hovercraft took him from the arena, Finnick started to believe that he wasn’t alone.
67
Haymitch
Year after year, it was always the same. Two kids with hope in their eyes, even when they tried to hide it with bluster and bravado or when it was overshadowed by fear, sent home by the Capitol in a body bag, leaving Haymitch to look their families in the eye and tell them how sorry he was. And he was sorry. That was the thing of it. He was sorry. Sorry that they were reaped. Sorry that they died. Sorry that he couldn’t do a damn thing to save them.
He started drinking on the train to the Capitol. Something to dull the edge of that knife twisting in his gut.
When he arrived in the Capitol, two hope-filled kids in tow, he received an invitation to a party at the home of Honoria Stoker following the Opening Ceremonies. Printed on familiar cream and blue stationary, it bore the presidential seal and the initials “CS.” Haymitch shook his head and tossed it in the trash.
It was a memorable party, although that had nothing to do with Honoria. After she dragged him off for a quickie before returning to mingle with her guests, Haymitch headed to the bar in the corner. While he waited for his drink, he leaned against the bar and surveyed the crowd; a mixture of Capitol citizens and victors, uniformed servants - some Avox, some not - slipped in between. He spotted Mags talking to a man Haymitch half-recognized and, drink in hand, he headed that way.
Mags introduced the man as Plutarch Heavensbee; Haymitch knew the name. The man was a Gamemaker whose star was on the rise. While his first instinct was to turn around and quickly head the other way, something in the man’s expression, the look in his eyes when he held out his hand for Haymitch to shake, made him stay.
The conversation that followed, with Mags and Heavensbee and Woof, who joined them a few minutes later, was the highlight of the evening. It started out innocently enough, a discussion of history, more than anything else, touching on the Dark Days and life before the Games, something which Mags and Woof were old enough to remember. But that conversation sparked an idea in Haymitch, something he intended to follow up on with Mags when they were someplace with fewer Capitol eyes and ears.
Who knew a stinking Gamemaker, of all people, could instill in him something resembling hope?
*
Although dawn was just around the corner, it was still dark outside when Haymitch got back to the Training Center from Honoria’s party. Pretty lit, though not so drunk that he couldn’t function, Haymitch was still dreaming about the possibility of a real future, even though he fully expected Mags to laugh at his ideas when he finally got the chance to talk to her in private.
Even better was the fact that Honoria had let him go without protest, having moved on to Gloss. Haymitch’s Capitol star was waning, something he wished had happened a hell of a lot sooner. Maybe next year, he wouldn’t have to be nice to anyone.
The lobby was dark when he passed through it; the only light came from a fixture in the far corner. He carefully wove his way through the tables and chairs in his path and passed the bar. He punched the call button on the elevator, and it was then that he heard what sounded like a choked off sob from the vicinity of the bar. Frowning, he walked back in that direction.
“Finnick?” The kid was huddled in a ball on the floor behind the bar. He was clearly trying to hide, but when he looked up at Haymitch, there was no hiding the livid marks on the left side of his face where someone had hit him, the beginnings of a black eye or the bite marks on his neck. “Shit.” Haymitch reached out a hand to help Finnick up, but the boy shied away. The elevator announced its arrival, but Haymitch ignored both it and the fear in Finnick’s eyes and hauled him up anyway, slinging one of Finnick’s arms over his shoulders and sliding his own arm around the boy’s waist.
“Let’s get you up to your floor and cleaned up.”
“No!” Haymitch looked into panicked green eyes. “I don’t want Mags to see me.” Haymitch felt a surge of rage and quickly masked his expression before Finnick could see it and somehow think that Haymitch was angry at him. That high he’d been feeling a few minutes earlier was nothing more than a memory.
“Alright. I’ll take you up to twelve instead.” He stabbed the call button again and the doors immediately opened. As soon as he and Finnick were inside, the boy pulled away from him.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what happened?” He sounded a little defiant and a lot scared. He wrapped his arms around his torso, eyes darting here and there but not lighting on anything for long. Haymitch pushed the brightly glowing twelve.
They stood in silence as the car rose, Haymitch looking at Finnick while Finnick’s gaze eventually rested on a spot on the floor. In the year since Haymitch had last seen him, the boy had filled out. When standing up straight, the kid had a good four inches on Haymitch’s own five feet ten, the promise of height in previously gangly limbs and lanky torso realized. But just then, the broad-shouldered, handsome boy stood pressed into a corner of the elevator trying to make himself look smaller.
As the elevator passed the eighth floor, Finnick finally looked up. He couldn’t quite meet Haymitch’s eyes, but he tried. Haymitch had to give the kid credit for that.
“You’re sixteen now, right?” Haymitch asked and Finnick nodded. With a snort, Haymitch continued, “I know exactly what happened.” He watched as confusion clouded those green eyes and the color drained from his face. “You think you’re the only one Snow ever sold?” The elevator doors opened onto the twelfth floor and Haymitch gave him a light shove when Finnick didn’t move right away; Finnick only made it about two steps before he fell to his knees, vomiting helplessly on the floor.
Haymitch knew all about that, too.
*
Staring out the window at the Capitol sunrise, Haymitch waited for someone in the District Four suites to pick up the phone; after the seventh ring, he was about to give up when Alisdair finally did.
“Get Mags,” Haymitch barked in lieu of a greeting. A moment later, she picked up the line.
“Hello? Who is this?”
“Mags, it’s Haymitch. Just wanted to let you know your boy is with me.” She let out a long and breathy sigh just before the sound cut off when she dropped the phone. Her voice was shaky when she spoke again.
“He’s safe then? He’s not hurt?” Haymitch couldn’t recall a time when Mags sounded so thoroughly rattled. He had to wonder just how much she knew of what had happened to Finnick the night before. Closing his eyes, he gripped the phone tighter; this was not the conversation he’d expected or ever wanted to have with Mags.
“I don’t think he needs a hospital, if that’s what you’re asking, but he might need a trip to Remake before he goes out in public.” There was a sharp intake of breath on her end followed by a rapid and angry stream of words Haymitch couldn’t understand. When there was no other response, he told her, “I brought him up here to twelve to get cleaned up. He didn’t want you to see him looking like… well, looking like he did.”
Her words were faint when she replied, “President Snow made it very clear that Finnick was to be told nothing.” Another pause as she blew her nose. “I’ve known that boy since the day he was born, Haymitch.” He heard the tears in her voice.
“Damn it. I didn’t tell you any of this to push the knife in any deeper.”
She snorted at that, and there was a little of her usual fire back in her voice when she said, “Just don’t leave him alone, Haymitch. Can you do that for me?”
Behind him, through the closed bedroom door, Haymitch heard Finnick’s voice, faint at first, but it quickly grew to something resembling a bitten off scream as Haymitch nodded, even though Mags couldn’t see it. He remembered his own first time.
The last thing Finnick needed just then was to be alone.
*
For the rest of the Games, the boy stayed with him during the days and Haymitch let him. There wasn’t anything either one of them could do about the nights when Snow had other plans, although Haymitch had more free time than Finnick. He could see the kid dying a little more inside each day and he did what he could; Finnick was about the only kid he could help, but at least he could do that.
He didn’t get the chance to talk to Mags about his ideas. She had too much on her mind, what with having a tribute who was a real contender that year, as well as what was happening with Finnick. It came down to Districts Four and Ten in the final showdown, so even though the boy from Ten won, Mags worked sponsors up to the bitter end and there was never an opportunity for that talk.
Once again, Haymitch delivered two dead kids to two grieving families and returned to his house to drink in the darkness.
It didn’t matter that it was bright daylight outside.
Finnick
Battered, bruised, and hurting in both body and pride, Finnick stumbled out of the car before the driver could do more than open the door for him. He yanked the Training Center door open and hurried through it, intent only on getting back to his room where he could wash away the stink of what had happened and his own fear. Halfway to the elevators, he thought of Mags and he began to shake. Changing course, he hid behind the bar. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. There was no way he could face Mags.
That was where Haymitch Abernathy found him. The man didn’t ask questions, said some things that made Finnick think that what happened after he left the party with that man was no surprise. When Finnick said he didn’t want Mags to see him like that, Haymitch took him up to the twelfth floor and let him shower there. He didn’t say anything about how long that shower lasted, either.
He hid out in Haymitch’s room, not touching anything but the chair in the corner where he sat until Haymitch and the others left for tribute training. He did his best not to think about the night before, but it was hard; when he caught a glimpse of his own face in a mirror once he thought it might finally be safe to sneak out, it all came flooding back. The crowd of people, the dancing, the drinks that kept replacing the ones he finished until his head swam, and through it all, Gaston Tyco, a man the same age as his own father and who stayed nearby no matter what Finnick did. He’d seemed okay, even made him laugh at some of the things he said when he’d answered questions about his own Games.
Finnick had been to Capitol parties before, so he didn’t think anything of it when Tyco invited him to another. He’d told Mags what he was doing and she’d said she’d see him in the morning. And then Tyco… Finnick had fought, but he was drunk, his reflexes shot, and in the end, the best he could do was to not cry.
His hand on the doorknob, Finnick abruptly turned and dashed into Haymitch’s bathroom to vomit into the sink.
*
When Finnick returned to his own room, successfully evading everyone he knew, he found a cream-colored envelope on his bed. Inside it was a note advising him of a meeting that afternoon with President Snow, instructing him to wait in the Training Center lobby for the car to pick him up. After staring at the note in his hands for a good minute, Finnick dropped it and went to his closet, rifling through it for something nice enough to wear to a meeting with the President of Panem. He’d spoken to President Snow several times since he became a victor, and the man had never been anything but kind to him; but this seemed different, more official.
It couldn’t hurt to take another shower.
*
Finnick blinked back tears and fought to regain his composure. “I don’t understand.” His voice was steady, so at least he had that, at least he didn’t fall completely apart. Mags knew? She knew? How could she know? Inside, he was screaming.
“Which part do you not understand, Mr. Odair?” Snow stared at him with one eyebrow raised and Finnick felt like the man could see right through him to the scared little boy who wished he’d never walked out of that arena. “The part about your new duties as a victor? Or…?”
“I don’t understand any of it.” Mags knew about Gaston Tyco, and, apparently, so did the President. She knew and she hadn’t said anything. Betrayed as Finnick felt over Snow’s pretending to be his friend these past few years, it was nothing compared to Mags. He loved Mags, and he thought that she cared about him. But she was a part of this? She knew that Finnick was going to have to “entertain patrons,” as Snow so politely put it, for the “foreseeable future?” He wished the ground would open beneath his feet and swallow him whole.
While Finnick was still reeling, Snow warned him there would be consequences if he didn’t cooperate, and then he showed him a tape and said that what happened to Haymitch Abernathy’s loved ones could just as easily happen to his own. He didn’t know what to think, didn’t know what to believe or who to trust.
Between being raped, learning that Mags knew it was going to happen, and Snow telling him that it was going to happen again, Finnick wanted nothing more than to curl up into a tiny ball and die.
But he couldn’t even do that for fear of what Snow would do to his family.
*
Deciding that there was one person he could trust, Finnick stuck with Haymitch Abernathy as much as he could for the rest of the Games. Haymitch never did ask any questions, nor did Finnick ask anything of Haymitch beyond just letting him stay. He and Chaff included Finnick when they sat around drinking and telling stories; Finnick didn’t join in, but he did watch and listen and gradually, the terrible knot of fear and self-loathing inside him began to loosen. They didn’t treat him any differently than they had before, except that maybe Haymitch treated him a little more like an equal than a kid. It helped.
He avoided Mags. He didn’t know what to say to her, didn’t know how to act around her anymore. And every time he had a “date” - there were nearly a dozen of them, and at least two of those hit the tabloids, before Jayce from Ten won - it got worse. It got worse because not only did Mags know what he was doing with all those people, but also, because of the reporters and photographers. His parents knew about it, too, and it didn’t matter that none of it was Finnick’s choice. No one back home would know that. They would believe whatever they saw about him on TV.
Finnick desperately missed his family, but he just as desperately did not want to go home.
68
Haymitch
Haymitch wasn’t required to attend any of the pre-Games parties the next time he was in the Capitol, but he went anyway. He hated the damned things, but they were still one of the best ways to round up sponsors, which were hard enough to come by for Twelve, so he couldn’t afford to stay in the Training Center and read. Or drink. But for the first time in years, the impulse to imbibe was more or less under control.
At Honoria Stoker’s party, he sought out Mags and told her he wanted to talk to her on the Training Center roof later that night. She didn’t ask any questions, but she did agree to meet him before Honoria spotted the two of them and called Mags away. As Mags left him, Haymitch’s gaze fell on Finnick in a heated embrace with an older woman at the edge of the dance floor. Feeling a little sick, Haymitch turned away. There was nothing he could do about it.
Not yet at least.
*
Mags was already on the roof when Haymitch got there, the wind whipping at her hair and the fabric of her long skirt as she leaned on the low wall surrounding the rooftop gardens, watching out over the city. Between the noise of a dozen wind chimes and the fountain burbling merrily away toward the center of the flowerbeds, no one should overhear them. Listening devices were hard to use in that environment. If they wanted to use them, they’d have to put the roof under a dome to keep out the wind, and for whatever reason, that was something they weren’t willing to do.
Joining Mags at the wall and keeping his voice low, Haymitch began, “After our talk last year, I got to thinking….” He talked for a good ten minutes, laying out his case, citing the rising quotas for coal and shrimp and cloth that they’d spoken of with Heavensbee the year before, and how they never seemed to go back down again. He mentioned the twenty-three dead kids, year after year, and how being that one kid who lived was, in a way, far worse. He pointed out that the only people who moved much between districts were the victors and how the government was used to those victors doing what they were told to do.
“Most of us have a measure of respect in our home districts.” He didn’t include himself in that number. “We could leverage that. It won’t be easy, but if we’re smart about it, if we take it slow and steady, we could make a change.”
Mags didn’t say anything right away, just continued looking out over the city; but he could see from her face, even in profile, that she was thinking about what he’d said. After who knew how long, she turned toward him, sweeping her hair from her eyes when the ever-present wind blew it over her face.
“Woof will join us,” she said and Haymitch nodded, his heart picking up its pace at the way she phrased it as a given, not only that Woof would join them, but that there was something there to join. “We need to keep it small, for now, and recruit more people only as we need them.” Mags smiled then and it was the most beautiful thing Haymitch had ever seen. “It’ll take a bit of time to properly plan a rebellion.”
*
That year, the Games flew by. There were no miracles. Haymitch’s kids still died. He still drank too much. Nothing at all had changed.
But everything had changed.
Finnick
Still too young to mentor, at least according to President Snow, Finnick entertained another dozen or so Capitol citizens to the backdrop of the 68th Games. Four of his patrons that year were not just rich, but high profile, too, so Finnick had to worry about what his family and friends back home thought about seeing him with these women and men. But if he was honest with himself, he knew what they thought.
They thought he was a slut. That he’d won his Games too young and the lifestyle of the Capitol, so different from that of the districts, had gone to his head. And no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t say anything to set them straight.
The only times he felt like himself anymore were the afternoons he spent with Haymitch. Even though everyone in Mentor Central knew what he was doing, even though he’d cleared things up with Mags and understood that she’d had no choice - none of them did - Haymitch was still the only one Finnick felt comfortable with. The older man even showed him a little bit of how to mentor while his district was still in the Games.
Finnick Odair spent his days in Mentor Central with his fellow victors, his nights with strangers, and he wanted to die.
But he was a victor. A survivor. And even as he wanted to die, he slowly began to learn how to live.
69
Haymitch
District Seven won the 69th Games. Haymitch’s kids never had a chance. Even after his district was out of the Games, both kids on the first day, he only had a couple of patrons, women he’d been with before. And he learned that the tape Snow showed Cashmere a couple of years earlier had become kind of a thing. Cashmere. Gloss. Finnick. But not last year’s victor, a kid from District Two. The Twos only rarely wound up as part of the circuit; Enobaria was the exception.
He wondered if the new victor, a sixteen-year-old girl whose looks were striking rather than pretty and who turned out to be downright vicious with an axe, would end up seeing that tape, too. He still didn’t know what was on it; he had never asked.
Finnick
Finnick stood on the stage at the reaping and watched as the kids climbed up the stairs to join him and the other District Four victors, just as he did every year, but that year, it was different. He wasn’t just a victor, he was now a mentor. Calleen Delmar was eighteen - the same age as Finnick - and a volunteer, trained as Finnick had never had the chance.
Calleen made it clear on the train to the Capitol that she wanted Finnick; he made it just as clear that that wasn’t going to happen. From that moment on, she ignored everything he said. He tried to switch tributes with Coral, his mentoring partner, but she refused on the grounds of District Four tradition: mentor-tribute pairs were comprised of opposite genders, because the powers that be back home thought it best to have a different perspective during that week before the Games began. Nothing Finnick said swayed her.
He wished Mags was there.
In addition to fighting with his tribute during that first week, Finnick had to keep two Capitol citizens happy. He was off the hook during the Games themselves, which was a pretty powerful incentive to keep his tribute alive, but he learned quickly - and Haymitch confirmed it - that there wasn’t all that much he could do to influence things once his tribute was inside the arena. The only thing he could do was solicit sponsors and, feeling sick at making promises he would later have to make good on, Finnick amassed quite a bit of money for District Four; but in the end, it didn’t matter.
Four was out of the Games within a week and Finnick ended up repaying the generosity of half a dozen sponsors before the closing ceremonies ended.
He wondered if it would ever get easier.
Johanna
The axe slipped from nerveless fingers to the bloody, muddy ground. Johanna Mason followed it down, landing on her knees, staring into a pair of light brown eyes. Dead eyes. She couldn’t have stopped the tears that leaked from her own if she’d tried, so she didn’t bother. Didn’t bother to stop the wracking sobs that followed, either.
A wind from above blew dirt and leaves into her face and she finally tore her gaze away from the girl from One who had once been favored to win. “What good is all your training now?” she asked. Of course, there was no answer.
Johanna watched the hovercraft descend. It stopped just above the tops of the trees and a portion of its belly slid back to allow a ladder to unfold. Whoever was flying that thing had damned good aim; all Johanna had to do was push back up to her feet and reach for it. Drawing on reserves of strength she didn’t know she had, she managed it.
What followed was a blur for years afterward. The memories of the four days between killing the last tribute and walking off that Capitol stage with a crown on her head returned to her little by little, and always at a bad time. She did remember Caesar Flickerman remarking that her family would be so proud of her, and she remembered thinking that no, they really wouldn’t, but they would be happy she was coming home.
She returned to District Seven with Blight and Burr and the knowledge that she would have to go back to the Capitol every year for the Games because District Seven finally had a female victor.
Johanna never wanted to see the Capitol again.
part 2