Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The page begins with the person's picture. A photo if we can find it. If not, a sketch or painting by Peeta. Then, in my most careful handwriting, come all the details it would be a crime to forget. 

Haymitch finally joins us, contributing twenty-three years of tributes he was forced to mentor.

For the first five years, Haymitch is full of hope.

Year 51

Consecutive victories don't happen often. Consecutive District 12 victories? The concept is ridiculous.

But Haymitch can feel it. It's going to happen this year. The extra food from Parcel Day has meant even the poorest in the district eat every day. He can see the differences in the children especially, who walk to school with more color in their cheeks and more weight on their bones. The two that are reaped will already have that advantage over many other tributes from the poorer districts.

At the reaping, for the first time, two victors' names are read instead of one at the opening speech. Lucy Gray Baird, as always, and then, Haymitch Abernathy. Even though it's required, it feels like a good omen, even some sort of insult to the Capitol that despite everything they've done to him he is still standing. Next year there could be three names, and another survivor alongside him.

The tributes are as strong as he could have hoped for. They're in at least mediocre condition and Haymitch himself proved that you don't need to have arms like the District 2 tributes to come out the winner. Really, either one could be victor material. They are both around his age, and Haymitch already recognizes the boy from being one of the fastest runners in the school. The girl is reasonably strong, apparently from carrying her toddler twin brothers around all the time and helping their neighbors fix their roofs. Both have a determined glint in their eyes, and they latch on to Haymitch's every word like his victory gave them hope of a chance. They're even attractive enough that the coal miner outfits just look boring instead of hideous.

The girl dies seventy seconds into the bloodbath. The boy is quick enough to grab some supplies and flee the Career pack and lasts three hours before they find him again.

That night is the first time Haymitch drinks until he passes out.

Year 52

These two are dead the minute they're reaped. They both start crying the second they realize it's them and they don't stop for that entire first night on the train. They pick at their food and don't want to talk the next day, but slowly, gently, he coaxes some words out of each of them and figures out what they know. The girl is a thief, but not a very good one, she says. The only skill the boy seems to have is making flat loaves out of his tesserae grain.

Haymitch gets them to give training a solid attempt. Focus on the survival stations, he says, knowing that these two may not have the heart for combat. They don't score well at the end of the week, they don't have any allies, and their interviews are timid, but what they report back to him verbally shows that they've learned at least a little. 

Any odds would say they'll both be dead by day 2. He staunchly refuses to look at the odds because he just knows that if he can do things right he can pull one of them through.

They actually both survive the bloodbath. First time in over a decade for District 12, and when he sees them safe after the first set of cannons fire he can't help grinning. But they're out in the ruins of an ancient city that night, shivering themselves to sleep, and he doesn't have enough funds to send them anything.

The Careers find the boy that night, and thirty seconds later he's dead. The girl tries to sneak into the Careers' supply for food the next morning and gets caught. Haymitch can't help but feel like it's his fault, and he replays everything he's done trying to find how he could have saved her. Maybe if he'd networked a little better he could have sent her gifts. Maybe if he'd talked in more detail about different types of arena she'd have been less surprised to see a ruin instead of a forest. Maybe if he'd been more forceful about eating during training week she'd have been less hungry and more careful. 

Haymitch stays in the Control Room for hours after she's dead, until Mags drags him away from the black screen. But he can't stop thinking. Maybe if he learns enough, he'll get it right next year and bring someone home.

Year 53

Haymitch turns 19 three months before the reaping this year. For the first time, both his tributes will be younger than him, and he thinks maybe this is what he's missing in his mentorship. He's learned, like he promised himself. The other victors seem to regard Brutus and Mags as two of the best mentors, and so he's spent time reflecting on what they've done, and one of the keys is taking on that nurturing, older-family-member role.

It's hard to be an older brother unless you're actually older than the person you're mentoring, and so this time he could actually get it right.

He knows it's not all him, of course. The bare odds of one of his tributes coming home are 1 in 12, and that's before accounting for the fact that some of the other districts send in kids with years of weapons training. Still. There's no reason District 12 has to have this low a survival rate, and now that they have a mentor they'll have a chance. He'll get a 12 victory soon, he feels it. Why not this year?

The two tributes are about the same as last year's, but this time he's prepared for it. Instead of faint-hearted coaxing, he comes in with reasonable and firm rules. Eat this, he starts with the sobbing girl. Then, wipe off your face, go stand by the window and wave . She does. Having someone guide her seems comforting to her, and she latches on and listens to everything he says through training week. She's no Career, but she at least learns to look put-together and pleased to be in the Capitol, which in itself can win at least some attention and favor.

The boy started the week expressionless, but doesn't take to being told what to do all the time and eventually starts protesting. Haymitch can't help but grin at this- that spirit and spark is exactly what he wants to see, and it comes out well in the interviews. Sure, they get a three and a five in training, but they are neither disliked or forgettable, and that's already a step up from a lot of the other tributes. So why not have real hope in a 12 victory?

The morning the Fifty-Third Hunger Games begin, Haymitch greets the other mentors and settles into his station and gets ready to fight to bring these kids home.

Neither one survives the bloodbath, and Haymitch is left to sit and stare at the sponsor gifts he'll never get to send and try to figure out what he's supposed to be feeling now. Why does the loss of these two tributes hurt more than the others? Is it worse or better for him to feel as though he did everything right and still failed? Or did he make some critical mistake after all?

Rather than try to answer these questions, Haymitch starts drinking himself into oblivion for the third time.

Year 54

Haymitch made a point of shutting himself away from District 12 after his family was killed. If he didn't let anyone else into his life, he couldn't get anyone else hurt. And Snow wouldn't have anything to use against him.

So as it was, he never knew the names of any of his tributes until they were read at the Reaping, except for one. Clementine Coe. His girlfriend's sister, just turned twelve a month before she was reaped. It's not by random chance that she's going to the arena, and everyone in District 12 knows it.

She doesn't deign to speak to him in anything but biting, angry single sentences for a week. She takes his advice for training, but she does so with a scowl and a steadfast refusal to make eye contact. Haymitch doesn't push her- they both know it's his fault she's here at all. But the day of the interviews, she starts crying during prep. "I'm sorry," she sobs into her hands. "I just miss her so much."

Haymitch tries his best to comfort her, and tries his best to not feel guilty that night. Because the truth is, he doesn't really miss her anymore. He'll carry the weight of her life every day until he dies, and he'll wish she wasn't dead, but how can you miss someone when you've already started to forget what she looked like?

He knew the odds on the boy, a sweet and starved fifteen-year-old, were short already. But he really hoped to save Clem.

He didn't.

Year 55

In the past, Haymitch has only drunk on the nights his tributes died. He deserves a few hours on those nights to turn his brain off, and he's figured out fast that nothing works for him like alcohol. It's fine, it's regulated, one night of blackout a year won't do anything bad to him.

This year, he's started wondering why it matters if something bad happens to him after all. Being dead wouldn't change the amount of lives he's managed to save so far. And the nights are getting worse than ever. Along with the familiar horrors, he keeps having nightmares about Clem's face as the boy from 2 snapped her neck. So he's found a supplier of white liquor in 12. He only goes through a bottle or two a month. It really isn't much, and sometimes it's the only thing that keeps him going.

When the girl is reaped this year, he feels his heart sink. She's one of those skinny things from the Community Home that's never had enough to eat in her life. She has a name she says she made up herself because no one knows what her mother wanted to call her. Supposedly she's seventeen, but he would have believed her if she'd said she was twelve. She shovels food into her mouth from the minute she steps on the train, though, which is a good instinct. Haymitch reminds himself that he's not going to give up on these kids until it's over and reaches for that exhausted sense of hope once again.

When Haymitch asks the boy what he's good at, he says singing. It's not the best talent for the arena but they agree to give it a go in the interview- why not try for the sponsor money? 

Except he turns out to be a terrible singer, possibly the worst Haymitch has ever heard. Whoever told this boy he could carry a tune must be out of their goddamned mind. Haymitch winces through the entire song- though it's a bit generous to call it that- and even Caesar Flickerman is rendered speechless for a moment before he wrangles out a compliment about how much personal character that song showed.

It doesn't matter what Haymitch says to Capitol citizens after that. The accounts do not fill up with money. 

The girl snaps her leg on the first day falling down a hill, and the Gamemakers decide she's done for and send in some mutts to give her a more exciting death. The boy is somehow still alive after a few days, but when he runs out of food, decides he'll sing again to see if he can get any donors. 

Haymitch would have said this was a terrible idea even if the Career pack wasn't only a few hundred feet away. They find him in minutes and Haymitch sits in shock as the cannon fires.

Somehow he really believed that one of these kids would make it this year.

If you'd asked him, sure, he would have said it was a long shot. But some part of him didn't consider their deaths a possibility until they happened, and got his hopes up again only to be heartbroken. As if he's some defiant hero, facing down the Capitol with his stubborn insistence in believing in the downtrodden children of District 12.

But the Capitol has never, never given a fuck about the hopes of Haymitch Abernathy. The only person he can hurt with them is himself. And if that's the only effect, well, there are simpler ways to get that done.

This year he doesn't need to go find the nearest Capitol bar to get started. He brought a bottle with him.

Chapter Text

For the next five years, Haymitch is full of anger.

Year 56

Things get bad.

No, they've been bad, and the only thing that's changed is that Haymitch has stopped pretending like they could ever be otherwise if he does enough. The Capitol has made sure of that. Haymitch has spent the last five years not really wanting to fight, to hurt anyone- he still vomits up a vile fountain of liquor whenever he thinks too hard about the way other people's blood felt on his skin. Fantasies of violence have been far from his mind, but they seem to have been buried rather than exiled, because the more he drinks, the more they start popping up again. The idea of strangling Gamemakers or President Snow suddenly starts making a regular appearance in his head.

The problem: President Snow is not here. The Gamemakers are not here. The only thing that's ever there is Haymitch and his anger and his bottle.

And so without the proper target for his anger, he fumes, uselessly rampages around District 12. After he comes back from the 55th Games he starts to make appearances in town, usually at the Hob, drinking himself incoherent at a stall and unleashing fragments of his temper on whoever crosses his path. He never actually injures anyone, so the Peacekeepers don't intervene. He's not even really dangerous - usually he shouts at someone who doesn't deserve it, makes a couple empty threats, sometimes he throws a punch or two, but he always leaves without anything unforgivable hanging over his head.

There's no point to spending his days like this when he only leaves feeling worse than when he started. But when you hate everything there's no way to spare yourself. Haymitch has no desire to spare himself.

He doesn't quite realize how miserable his life has become until the next Reaping. The first part honestly goes better than normal. He's drunk already and zones out through the mayor's yearly drivel. The girl is chosen. Then the boy. It's all almost tolerable until Haymitch's eyes catch on something small. As the male tribute makes his way up to the stage, he quickly reaches out, squeezes another boy's hand, and then lets go and leaves him behind.

Those two boys will never see each other again after today. As soon as the thought is in Haymitch's head, he burns with a white-hot rage that chokes out the rest of the ceremony. Somehow he makes it onto the train, but when he sees the faces of his two tributes again he can't stand it. Children, children, that the Capitol has set up to die and made him shepherd to their death.

His hands shake. His fingers tighten around his glass.

"When are we going to start training?" the girl asks. Doing so, with how he must look right now, shows astounding courage. Something else that will be wasted and gone by the end of the week.

He hurls his glass at the ground and barricades himself in his room, the sound of shattering echoing in his ears.

He still tries, starting the next morning. What else is there to do? But it's pointless in the end anyway. Two hours after the start of the Games, his screen goes black and he shoves his chair over, narrowly missing Chaff, a victor from 11 he's barely spoken to.

"Watch out," Chaff mutters without looking, eyes glued to Seeder's screen showing the surviving tribute from 11. Haymitch picks up the chair and almost knocks it against Chaff just to be contrary, but a Peacekeeper moves up to take it from Haymitch's hands.

"I can handle it," he snarls, and jerks away.

"Mr. Abernathy," she says, and reaches again.

"What do you care, it's just Capitol garbage," he says, and to illustrate his point throws the chair down into the center of the room with a loud crash. The rest of the mentors turn to stare. "It is, go on, throw it away like everything else!"

He storms out. Lyme - whose tribute, surprisingly, is already dead - rushes after him. She gets about halfway through a cautious sounding sentence about how if that's how he's really feeling, he should meet up with some of the other victors sometime this week. 

He tells her she can go join all their dead tributes if she doesn't leave him alone.

Year 57

The Fifty-Sixth Hunger Games was just a brief hiccup in the routine Haymitch is building for himself. He goes back to District 12 and keeps drinking and being angry at whoever is unfortunate enough to cross his path. 

When the Victory Tour comes around six months later, that person is the newest victor, Sorrel from 11. She gives a perfectly acceptable speech, which for some reason infuriates him, and then they hold a dinner in her honor at the mayor's house when someone asks her what makes her happy to be a victor.

Sorrel bites her lip and glances around the table. "The… honor. I'm glad to participate in such old traditions."

"Psychopath." Haymitch knows he's out of line, but. He scowls across the table, unwilling to take it back. She excuses herself briefly and Chaff and Seeder follow behind her.

Later, Haymitch catches Chaff a few hours before the District 11 victors get back on the train. "Look," he says. "I'm sorry I said that. Could you pass it along?"

Chaff looks at the bottle in Haymitch's hand. "You're a real piece of work, you know that?"

"Sure do," he says.

Chaff nods. "Right then. I'll tell her. If you can show me where to get a proper drink around here." In the rest of the night, they become, if not friends, friendly acquaintances. It's a new experience for Haymitch, who has never before paid that much attention to the other victors. For the first time he really considers what Lyme started to say to him last year.

He also thinks about the question Sorrel was asked. He has no reason to enjoy being a victor. But he asks the tributes he gets that year what they would be most excited about, if they won. Neither one needs long to think. The boy says he'd be glad to feed and support his family. The girl says she'd finally get to escape hers. 

After the tributes die, Haymitch leaves food on one doorstep and a beaten-up, unconscious abuser on another.

Year 58

The girl asks if she can have some alcohol too. Haymitch should probably say no, but he pours her one glass, and then a second. Her training partner looks on in horror and then shuts himself in his room. He's far too open with his emotions, which will sink his interview, but right now it brings Haymitch back to his senses enough to refuse the girl a third drink when she asks. 

She explodes at him, screaming and grabbing, and has to be restrained by the Avoxes and given a drug to make her sleep. She does everything she can to get her hands on more- begging, threatening, attempting to steal from his room. It's horrifying to watch, doubly so because he knows he's looking in a mirror.

It sticks with him. After all the great glorious celebrations of the Hunger Games die down and Haymitch is once again sent back to District 12 alone, he wanders over to the Hob and orders a drink. Someone complains about it, that everyone knows Haymitch is just looking for a fight when he gets back from the Games. Haymitch feels a perverse satisfaction at having an outlet for his anger so conveniently at hand and gets ready to shout something and freezes. 

The Head Gamemaker this year ended up giving 12's alcoholic tribute some liquor before she entered the arena so that she'd be able to stand upright to be slaughtered. Haymitch is furious at it all, and he has always known that punching some random citizen of Twelve is going to do nothing, but tonight it runs through him like icy clarity. The Gamemakers probably got a kick of the whole "like mentor, like mentee" idea.

Haymitch has enemies. And they are not going to be found in the Hob.

He takes his drink home that night and finishes it by himself, in his house. Haymitch Abernathy's days as the drunken brawler of the district are over. He instead becomes a drunken recluse again, and it is almost as miserable, and it is also, he thinks, the first good choice he has made in a long time.

Year 59

The only drawback to his new lifestyle is that his rage has no outlet until the Games actually begin. Lysander, the district escort, has been around at least fifteen years and has only grown more insufferable with time. As always, he cheerfully prances around the stage, reads the girl's name first, and grins when she comes up on stage, probably because she's actually quite pretty. Haymitch has half a mind to deck Lysander immediately. 

The Reaping somehow gets worse when Lysander calls the boy's name and no one moves. He reads it again and then, flustered, asks Peacekeepers to help find the tribute. But it's not a case of fear or attempted hiding. The boy is deaf. 

Mentoring goes just fine anyway. Haymitch communicates instructions through writing, and the two tributes shyly make friends, constantly passing notes back and forth. The interview is done in the same manner, and it stands out. Both tributes end up having sponsors. The Gamemakers even assure Haymitch that the tributes' plates should vibrate when the gong sounds to start the Games. All, it seems, to make sure this child will be murdered fairly.

Lysander, though, Lysander continues to treat the boy as if he's a toddler or maybe just stupid, insisting on using loud, slow, speech, and gesturing to his mouth even after the boy says he can't read lips.

The first few times he does it, Haymitch pointedly hands him a pencil and paper. When that doesn't work, Haymitch interrupts Lysander to ask what important information he could possibly have anyway, as he's never said anything useful before.

The next time, Haymitch slaps him. Once for his tribute's sake and then once more just because Lysander has been infuriating him for a whole decade now. He then throws an entire bowl of sauce onto Lysander's extremely fashionable white shirt.

Both tributes snicker, and Haymitch wants to punch something else when he realizes he actually likes these two. He's going to try hard for them, and he's going to fail, and even though Lysander is a part of everything wrong, nothing's going to change in the end.

The tributes do well, staying together and surviving both the bloodbath and the first night. He's able to send them gifts, but he doesn't dare get his hopes up. At least they manage to have a few pleasant days together, swimming in one of the many lakes while the Careers hunt in all the wrong places. In the end, the Careers never find them at all, and that's a blessing too. When Cecelia kills his tributes, it's over fast.

Year 60

He was wrong about one thing last year: something has changed. His outburst had an effect after all. Lysander is gone, replaced by a woman named Effie. She's chirpy and aggravating and it takes him all of thirty seconds to figure out he will never be able to stand her, but she's better than Lysander.

For example: she is very condescending to the male tribute, the younger brother of last year's female tribute. He's also quite attractive and Haymitch wonders if it was a fix. He doesn't respond well to either Haymitch or Effie's coaching, which is understandable. Haymitch is hard to like and Effie talks down to both tributes. But, when the male tribute says he needs a break and shuts himself in his room, Effie realizes he's probably sad about his sister and gives him space.

A trace of human empathy in a Hunger Games escort. It's a miracle.

She's also better at coaching personality and demeanor. This year's female tribute is walking in heels like a natural by the time her interview comes along and manages some polite small talk with Caesar that she certainly wasn't capable of at the beginning of the week. The boy plays the sexy angle relatively well, too. It's not enough to make them win, but it's something. Someday it could be the difference for one of their tributes.

The problem is, if Effie keeps being this good, she'll be bumped up to a better district the second she gets her first victor. But that's a problem for a later time, because they have to actually get a victor first, and that in itself would be a blessing.

It's even just a little bit better when the girl is killed at the Cornucopia, when the boy dies of thirst on day five, because Effie seems sad about it too. Haymitch doesn't stay to spend time with her and instead drinks until he blacks out at the closest Capitol bar. When a few more days have passed and he's functional again, he comes to a reasonable conclusion: he may never like Effie, but he can work with her.

It's real change, one that may someday affect a tribute's life. It's a change he brought into the world. He's still angry, but now he wants that temper focused, actually going towards something he can make better. For the first time he almost feels like that's possible.

This time he approaches Lyme and asks if he can talk.

Chapter Text

For the next five years, Haymitch is full of pain.

Year 61

Haymitch opens the door and every silhouette in the room stiffens, heads jerking in his direction until the other victors see it's him. Most give him some sort of acknowledging nod, and back their chairs up slightly so there's room for him to join. They're sitting in a circle but it's clear from the way they all glance at Mags that she's truly the leader here. 

"Welcome, Haymitch," she says. 

Hell, they're not doing introductions, right? They all know each other already. "Yeah," he says. "Sorry I'm late," and sits down. Mags, blessedly, gestures to Seeder, who gives the very end of an update on what sounds like potential food distribution options in the case of a rebellion. 

Rebellion. What?

On the victory tour six months ago, when yet another muscled warrior from District 2 had stood onstage and spoke to the hostile, hungry faces that form District 12, Lyme had taken a slow, meandering walk with him through the streets. She hadn't been able to say much, only vague statements about influence and change mixed in with references to the weather. Haymitch had thought he'd understood. Get the right people into positions in the government, wait for President Snow to get old enough to plausibly die of natural causes, and then - somehow - assassinate him. He'd inferred that end step himself, but it was the only way he could think of to stop the Games. Short of something ridiculous and impossible, such as, say, a full-scale revolt.

The idea is the stuff of stories, sure, but it's unattainable. He knows that. He looks around the room and sees those focused, exhausted, hopeful faces and his heart twists because that sight always leads to death. Has for every tribute of his for the last decade. Why don't the other victors see it too?

But they all give updates in their turn, acting as if this is completely reasonable. They talk supplies, power, weapons- "District Two will still back the Capitol," says Lyme, shaking her head. "And we can't defeat them by force, even with thirteen." Thirteen what? 

Haymitch sits and listens, praying no one asks him about coal. They don't. No one says anything to him at all until the very end, when the conversation shifts to the current Games. All the Careers are still alive and it's most likely one will win, though they also bring up a girl from Six who seems to have an outside chance. 

"Any others? Haymitch, one of yours is still alive, right? The boy?" Beetee asks.

Haymitch shakes his head. The boy had drawn Haymitch's eye at the reaping, walking up to the stage and shaking Effie's hand with a friendly confidence. He'd taken his District 12 teammate under his wing during the week, chatted with all the tributes, laughed and blushed good-naturedly when Caesar had poked fun at him during his interview, and thrown a few wholesome jokes back himself. 

He was a good kid, through and through. He didn't have any special skills, but he was simply decent.  

How far does that get you in the Hunger Games? About forty seconds.

"You're thinking of the girl," he tells Beetee. "But she, ah… no." 

She'd died less than an hour ago- that's why he'd been late, he'd needed a second to just curl up in a room somewhere and hurt as he thought about the way she'd pleaded for mercy. He'd replayed the memories of her from this week- her guarded eyes as she'd talked, when she'd laughed just a little bit with her fellow tribute- as if by cementing those memories in his head he'd be able to keep some version of her safe. And then he'd gotten up and gone to a meeting, so practiced at this by now that he can say this to Beetee with barely a break in his voice.

They finish talking tributes, Mags thanks them all, and most of the victors clear out. She turns to Haymitch. "So, what did you think?"

"There's got to be something I'm missing," he says. "No way are you all crazy enough to try this, not with the resources we have."

The corner of Mags's mouth tilts into a smile. "Knew you were a clever one. Let's have a talk about what really happened to District Thirteen."

Year 62

Haymitch takes an instant dislike to the female tribute, just because the girl wouldn't look out of place in District 2. She's a rare merchant-class pick, the butcher's daughter, so she's broad and solid in a way that suggests she's never gone a day without eating in her life. When her name is called, she clenches her jaw, jerks her chin up, and doesn't look back as she walks onstage. Effie beams at her and moves to read the other name, and her hand is reaching for the slips when the female tribute's composure shatters and she bursts into sobs.

Effie pauses. "Ah, the Reaping can be so emotional, we know that!" She gives a bright, fake, smile, but when it's clear the tribute is not going to pull herself together in the next few moments, Effie has no choice but to carry on. She grabs another name and reads it loudly, as if to cover up what's happening on stage behind her.

There's movement in the boys' section of the crowd, so Haymitch gets up - stumbles - but makes his way over to the female tribute. "Can't lose it here, sweetheart," he says. "Push your tongue on the roof of your mouth. Eyes up. Five deep breaths."

Old trick of his mother's. Before he got her killed. Maybe it's the drinks he had before the Reaping today - he doesn't really know how many - but suddenly Haymitch is following his own advice, forcing his eyes to look upward for a quick second so he can keep it together. And it works for the tribute, too, who shudders, squares her shoulders, and breathes in. Haymitch feels his initial resentment for her give way as he sees how hard she's trying. By the time her district partner, a slender, wide-eyed boy, makes it onstage to join her, she's able to nod and shake his hand. Her palm dwarfs his, but he doesn't look intimidated - just smiles.

It's an odd match, two tributes so different, especially since they're both promising, in their distinct ways. The butcher's daughter is as strong and sturdy as Haymitch thought, and takes to bladed weapons during training. In public, she's able to keep up a stoic persona, though it slips every night at dinner. But the boy - just the son of some coal miners, he describes himself - ends up being the surprising standout when he earns a nine from the Gamemakers.

"What did you do in there?" Haymitch asks that night. So far the boy had seemed fairly middling in terms of skills: he could work bows and spears just fine, and knew a lot about edible plants, but that shouldn't be enough to outscore half the Careers.

The boy grins back. "Mixed up some poisons. You told us to save our best skills for the private sessions."

And he'd refused to say what his were - even to Haymitch, which had been stupid, but otherwise makes sense. Kept secret, this could be the deciding factor in these Games, especially if other tributes or alliances are banking on a food supply. And, with such a promising showing in training, the Gamemakers will want to make sure they give him something to work with. "Where exactly did you come by skills like that in District 12?"

All Haymitch gets in response is a shrug. "I'll show you if I make it home." The boy's voice doesn't falter, but Haymitch's heart does. It's that if. It can't actually happen. They all know it, and there's no deadly flowers or berries or something that can change the odds that much, not against that entire arena. 

He'll try. He has to. But he doesn't kid himself for a second about the outcome.

He still doesn't believe it's possible even when both of his tributes survive the first day, and the second, and the third. The predictable Career pack forms, but the girls from Districts 7, 10, and 12 make an alliance of their own, and his other tribute bides his time, surviving off forest foliage as days tick by. 

The Careers get impatient after a week. Sponsor gifts start running low, and their worries over food have them bickering over their fire and arguing over guard duty. Enobaria - she's the girl from District 2 - keeps having to pull extra turns awake because the others won't step up. Finally, there's a night she drifts off right by the food stash, unaware of the boy carefully creeping past her. He grabs the water bottles one by one, pouring something into each, and finally adds a small handful of berries to their pile of fruit. He's about to creep off when he spots the last water bottle - Enobaria's, next to her on the ground where she sleeps.

No, Haymitch thinks, get out of there, but it's too tempting a target. The boy steps closer - pauses, there's no movement - reaches forward - 

Enobaria's eyes flicker open, and she lets out a cry and draws her sword, lunging forward in a wild slash. He kicks her in the face and runs, and when the Careers chase after him and find themselves out of breath on the hunt they reach for their water without thinking. When they start dropping, all but Enobaria, the boy escapes, clutching the wound from her sword, a deep gash on his arm that's bleeding more than Haymitch would like.

Across the arena, his female tribute and her allies are starving and have been for days. They're on a desperate search now for anything edible and are starting to debate the idea of eating some fruits they don't recognize. With funds low, Haymitch has been holding off sending food, hoping they'd find something, but if he doesn't act soon there will be no one to send anything to.

The boy's wound gets infected. He's been trying his best: washing it in the river, applying a handmade poultice, binding up his arm again, but he simply doesn't have access to what he needs to cure it. But Haymitch does. A particular medicine was flagged on his computer as a sponsor gift option the morning the infection set in, priced at exactly the current total of District 12 funds. He could send it, but it would be the last gift he had.

He sees two children on his screen. One flaring with fever, one fading from starvation. He has to make the choice tonight, before prices go up. It's viscerally, physically painful as he considers his options, closes his eyes, and hits a button.

The next morning, Enobaria finally tracks down her poisoner, and pauses a moment to consider his sleeping form. His wound is coated with a layer of fresh medicine, something high-quality brewed up in a Capitol lab, and she picks up the pot before she runs him through.

Across the arena, three girls hear the cannon fire and startle into action. It's time to make their gamble on food. The girl from 12 draws the short straw, and despite Haymitch's silent screaming, there's no hesitation as she reaches for a fruit and takes a bite.

Hours later, slumped over the table in the bar Chaff dragged him to, Haymitch is still wondering how he got it so wrong. Maybe it was that the male tribute reminded Haymitch of himself. But he should have known better. People like him don't win except in the ways they're not supposed to. 

Year 63

There is nothing out of the ordinary in Haymitch's path towards the Hunger Games this year. Two generically olive-toned, scared kids get called up onstage, funnel through a week of training, and out onto the arena, where they both sprint away from the Cornucopia, get tracked down by other tributes, and are killed within the first two days. If he were a Capitol man, betting on the Hunger Games, he'd have put money on this outcome. All the better he didn't get too attached during the week then. It makes it hurt less that he barely knew these kids, purposefully didn't try to this year. Just makes the inevitable easier.

For the next week and a half, he has no responsibilities and unfettered access to alcohol that he doesn't even need to walk to the Hob to get. He spends most of his waking time drunk, only roughly following the rest of the Games, until one of the meetings with the other victors - the future rebellion - gets pushed up, and he shoves his bottles away for the afternoon so he can join them in the same tense circle, brought to order quickly because they have a critical task at hand: choosing a tribute to back as victor.

It's the most immediate impact they actually have- when there are a few viable frontrunners in the Hunger Games, sometimes a shift of funds can swing a delicate balance. Victors have a special power in Panem, people of the districts who can almost rise above them, and with certain long-term goals in mind - well. It matters who joins those ranks.

"Élio isn't going to survive his first real fight," Haymitch insists, after they've brought up the boy from District Ten as an outside chance, still alive and apparently well-connected at home. "The rest doesn't matter if he can't make it."

Does it hurt to say? Maybe it will later. But it's true, and Élio's mentor from Ten has to agree with him as they move on to other candidates. Lyme says both the tributes from Two are huge Capitol sympathizers - she's not going to move funds away from them, but they'll be no help to a rebel movement. Seeder and Chaff have their bit to say about a boy of theirs who has actually seen combat and lived, but in the end it's a girl from District 5 they settle on. Then it's into the funds themselves, and Haymitch, with no more use for the remains of his meager account, pledges them all and excuses himself from the meeting.

That night, Gloss - a blond and beautiful living advertisement for the glory of District One - and Élio finally run across each other. They're not as mismatched as you'd think, but Gloss just has so much ease with the sword he's holding, and it's as sharp as it was on day one due to a whetstone dropped down as a sponsor gift, and in the end it's Élio who falls. The only way it could have gone, probably. Unless, well, unless he'd had more money on his side, but even then it would have been an uphill battle, and the chance is small it would have mattered. Haymitch resumes drinking and casts around for other things to fix his mind on.

It's something silly that does it - his dinner comes with a lemon slice, because in the Capitol, tropical fruit is so abundant they can use it as a garnish - and Haymitch is spitefully eating it and remembers that his male tribute this year loved trying all the new foods. 

How does he remember that? He was so deliberately not noticing at all, but the moments break through anyway in a stinging swarm. The boy asking for more orange juice at breakfast every morning, a smile breaking across his face the day he tasted grapefruit. And then other things - how intently he'd listened, how his district partner had anxiously fidgeted with her dress, refolding every pleat in the skirt, the colors of their eyes, the sound of fear in their voices, the way they'd each sprinted at the sound of the gong and tried anyway.

But who were they? Haymitch doesn't know, and it's not any easier after all. It's worse. The wondering consumes him, the fact that they spent their last week alive with him and he couldn't be bothered to learn anything past their favorite food, and there's just no such thing as distance from the pain of what he does. He wonders if it would be so bad if he died right now in this bar, kept drinking until every beat of his heart sent poison to his brain and he got to at least cause a final bit of trouble to some Capitol citizens with his last moments. 

They'd probably never let that happen, though. Save his life somehow. And, in theory, if he can hang on he can hit the Capitol with something far worse than drunkenly dying on the floor. 

The dying will wait, then. The drinking, though? These days it feels like it never stops.

Year 64

This year, Haymitch makes a personal first and falls asleep during the Reaping. It's a vast improvement to the experience. He'd woken up with a pounding headache that had taken half a bottle of strong wine to quiet down enough to consider walking any distance. They should feel lucky he made it here at all - stay awake through the mayor's entire speech, too? Fat chance.

Effie kicks the back of his chair, and he jerks awake to see two tributes onstage already, shaking hands and then pulling each other into a hug.

"Oh, great," he groans. "They're friends."

Effie rolls her eyes at him and goes to escort the tributes offstage. Haymitch stays in his seat, wondering if he's going to puke, until a Peacekeeper is forced to help him onto the train and directly into his bed for the journey.

The next morning, though, he's sure he can handle starting training. Not that these two look promising, sitting like quiet little mice at the breakfast table when he arrives. "All right," he says in lieu of an introduction. "What can you do?"

They stare at him for a moment, and then glance at each other, but don't volunteer anything. "Come on," Haymitch says. "Any kind of skill. Something from gym class you were good at. Ever held a weapon, anything at all?"

Eventually the girl shrugs. "I've used a knife a bit. Just at the butcher's shop. Sometimes they'll hire me for the day if they need an extra hand, since…" and trails off. Haymitch can finish her sentence: they need the help since Haymitch got their daughter killed two years ago. 

"And she can write really well!" the boy pipes up, an awestruck look in his eye. 

"Fight?" Haymitch asks, sure he's misheard.

"Write," the boy insists; "she won the poetry contest at school four years in a row!"

She grins. "And you've always helped me edit. But he's always been better at history…" 

And off they go, chattering to each other like they're back in school - which, it seems, is their absolute favorite place - instead of on the way to an arena spelling out their doom. Unless that arena happens to include a speed-reading contest, they are woefully unequipped to survive. Haymitch waves down a waiter for a drink as they argue over whose essay was better last month, and they only stop talking when they see him down the entire glass in one go. 

"Sorry," the girl says. "We're ready. What should we do?"

Haymitch shrugs. "Learn from your trainers. Play up all of this" - he vaguely waves between them - "the friendship, get a few more tributes in on that if you can. Read a poem during your interview."

"And if we do that," the boy says, and pauses. "I mean, I know we can't both - but you think one of us could make it back?" The way they look at him is like a hole ripping open in his chest. 

Haymitch looks at their underfed bodies and their sweet and earnest expressions. He thinks about the fact that Gloss's twin sister was reaped in District One this morning. 

"Yes," he lies, and orders another drink.

She shows up to interview prep in tears, crumpled sheets of paper in her hand. "I know you said write something - and I've been trying - in case I never - in case I don't -" and breaks off in incoherent sobs. Haymitch tentatively puts a hand on her shoulder, and when she doesn't flinch away, rubs a few gentle circles onto her back. He doesn't know how to do this - when was the last time he got to practice taking care of someone? - but after a second, she turns and throws her arms around his waist. Haymitch freezes in shock for a moment before he hugs her back.

"It's all right," she says when she finally pulls away. "I'll read something else, something I've already finished."

"What was this one about?" Haymitch asks.

A half-smile quirks into her mouth. "I don't even know, really. It's just like… I feel like there's the poem I've always wanted to write, the one that says something big, you know?"

"Small can still matter," he says. "They'll eat up something simple and sweet." She agrees, and that night her voice rings out across the Capitol, painting the trees of District Twelve and how orange spills across them in the fall. It's a hit, and he hopes she holds the moment tight - basking in the admiration, the gentle sighs, the roar of applause.

The next day, after she and her friend have both died, Haymitch visits her room to see if he can find the scraps of what she'd been working on. They're there on her desk, surrounding a fresh sheet of paper filled with handwritten lines. She must have tried again, once more, last night.

He grabs the poem, reads it frantically, and then lets the paper fall. It isn't finished. It never will be.

He stares at the crossed-through words, the stanzas that drop out halfway, for a long time before he gathers everything up and throws it into the fire.

Year 65

Haymitch is not known for his close attention to detail or his ability to stay present. But it's got to be a new record for him (winning exactly what contest?) when the last thing he remembers is drinking on the morning of the Reaping, and then he just… wakes up on a train to the Capitol. 

Presumably, they'd done the whole thing as usual, whether he was in a drunken stupor or not. He waves a Capitol attendant to his room and asks for another drink to stave off the hangover, but he knows he has to watch yesterday's broadcast before he goes out to eat breakfast. He can't kick off training by admitting he doesn't even remember who his tributes are, or knowing how much of a fool he made of himself yesterday. Mercifully, he doesn't make the highlight reel - he's only in the background of a few shots, looking surprisingly normal given his memory loss. No, this year a drunk-but-functional mentor isn't news at all, especially since the Hunger Games have taken a hard turn into full soap opera. 

He knows there's a new head Gamemaker - Seneca Crane - who he's heard loves the emotional storylines, and yes, okay, there are some beautiful tributes this year. Minerva from Two is tall and broad with intricate, dark braids, the boy Finnick from Four has bronze hair and a statue-perfect face, standing out among several that would definitely be considered good-looking too, and Haymitch realizes with surprise as he nears the end that one of his own tributes, the boy, is among them. 

Did Seneca Crane somehow do this, fix a lineup of the prettiest teenagers in Panem? How would he even go about that? Haymitch stops wondering about it because it doesn't matter: the tributes are the tributes, and even if half the marketing this year is about who will fall for each other in the training room, he knows better.

Except the tributes don't. Every day his female tribute comes back complaining that no one even looked at her, the other tributes are all busy flirting, some Career boy and someone else from an outer district practiced wrestling nonstop, and did they need to spend so much time oiling each other up before matches? 

"Minerva's too pretty," she whines after a week of this. "Some of the boys are acting so stupid around her," with a sullen look at her district partner. "It's like they forgot she wants to kill them."

"I didn't forget," he says, but his cheeks flush as he looks away. 

Haymitch scoffs at the gossip every time and tells the two of them to get their heads on track, but he's got to admit it's got him hooked. They release clips from training all week - everything from hesitant first eye contact to illicit makeout sessions - that the trainers must have instructions to enable, because while stuff like this happens sometimes, it's not this much, not broadcast this clearly. And it's working. The interviews are the most watched in the history of the Hunger Games.

His girl acts like the rumor-loving insider she is, hoping to gain the favor of those dying for another look at what's been going on all week in the training room. His boy completely fumbles and freezes - he's always had terrible stage fright, he confessed earlier that day. It doesn't really matter, because no one's paying much attention after Finnick Odair, all smiles and mischief and boyish charm, goes up onstage. Even when he's done, it's like he's still the center of the room, everyone pulling towards him, wanting to see more.

But the Hunger Games are not a dating show, and if any Capitol citizens had forgotten that, Haymitch hopes they remember when the girl from District Twelve becomes the first casualty. Whatever happened beforehand doesn't hold the tributes back at all as their numbers dwindle, and well before he'd expected it, they're looking at the final eight. And it's then that the rebel victors call a meeting.

"It's got to be Finnick. Minerva's got a chance, but she's too volatile." It's the first thing someone says. Haymitch doesn't catch who, because it could be anyone - they're all nodding in agreement already, like it's a done deal.

"It might not be Minerva," he puts in, because his own surviving tribute has been sticking tight to Minerva's side since the start of the game. If they took down Finnick together- if they made it to be the only two left- if Minerva gets backstabbed before she expects it- there are so many ifs, but they can't count on Finnick as anything like a sure choice. Fourteen-year-olds do not win the Hunger Games.

"Haymitch," Beetee says. "He's not a public speaker." 

"He doesn't deserve to die for that."

"Does Finnick?" Mags says. Her voice is solid steel and Haymitch gets his first glimpse of the victor she must have been fifty years ago. "Every year there are twenty-three children who die who don't deserve it. The only thing we can do in this room is to pick the one survivor who can help us change that fact someday. So tell me why your boy is the better choice than mine."

"Fuck you," he says. "You and your crowd of victors over in District 4. Do you have any idea what it's like without everyone at your beck and call, what it means to mentor kids who've been starving their entire lives. And have you even thought about what it'll do to Finnick if he wins- he isn't even fifteen yet, the Capitol will have their hands all over him." None of this is an argument. He won't be able to martial one because Mags is right. Finnick is effortlessly capable and dangerously charismatic and will be the best asset this rebellion will ever have and if he lives, others will die. "Fuck you," Haymitch simply repeats.

"We'll recuse you from the decision," Mags says, frustratingly unruffled.

Haymitch doesn't bother protesting because it's clear that with or without his vote, Finnick will be the one with the victors' backing. It only takes a few minutes to confirm it, and then they're into the logistics of transferring district funds and recommending sponsors. He returns to his screen and stays there until morning finds him reeking of alcohol. Onscreen a girl from 2 and a boy from 12 forage together, unaware of their impending doom.

It suddenly occurs to Haymitch that he could stop this, probably. Funds aren't technically supposed to be swapped between districts, and so when it happens it's done discreetly and usually gets lost in all of the other donations. Maybe the Gamemakers do know and don't care. But if Haymitch brought it up they'd have to investigate at least this once, and maybe they'd put a stop to it. 

And then Finnick, without the best sponsor gifts, will probably die, outnumbered as he is. Most likely, as soon as Finnick dies, Minerva will break the alliance and emerge the victor in the final fight. It's almost certain. What is he willing to risk? What does he really want?

Haymitch passes Seneca Crane, the new Head Gamemaker, in the hallway before lunch. And he realizes he's made his decision when he doesn't say a word at all.

That evening, a trident floats down from the sky and a beautiful boy takes it in his hands. Finnick Odair whirls through the arena like a fallen god, and all Haymitch feels is a gaping desolation. 

Haymitch is the kind of man who makes hard choices. The kind of man who does what is needed for the greater good. The kind of man who goes home to an empty street.

Chapter Text

For the next five years, Haymitch is full of despair.

Year 66

The girl from District 1 whips her head around just a bit too slowly, and so the axe splits her head open from the side. She sways for one horrifying moment before crumpling to the ground, the remains of her skull breaking in two from the impact. The boy from District 7, who'd swung the axe, drops the handle and vomits.

In the Control Room, most of the mentors wince, but Cashmere seizes up, shoving her chair back from her now-dark computer screen and retreating from the Capitol attendant who approaches her. "No, no, I-" she stumbles out, body shaking, and half-sprints out of the room.

Ah, well, it's a nasty way to lose a tribute, but she'll get used to it. Haymitch has. His screen has been black since his boy died a few hours ago, so desperately dehydrated he started drinking the salt water on the beach. Stupid - there's no way he didn't know better - but Haymitch isn't really in a place to judge. The only reason he hasn't gone back to his room and started drinking his own favorite poisons already is because Woof needed some sleep and asked him to keep an eye on District 8 until Cecelia's shift, and Haymitch isn't going to say no to someone who's been mentoring longer than he's been alive.

He realizes, unsure of the emotion to attach to it, that he's been mentoring for sixteen years now. Half his life. The decades stretch ahead of him suddenly: more of this for as long as he lives, and when he gets too old to keep up with it all there won't be a backup from Twelve to take a shift, it'll just be him, alone at his console, when he's forty, when he's sixty, if he makes it to eighty…

Fuck it. He needs to get out of here too. He tells an attendant to go wake Cecelia up and leaves once the District 8 mentor is back in place. When Haymitch steps outside the building, he's surprised to see Cashmere there as well, pacing back and forth, head in her hands.

This, he doesn't know what to do with. He gets it, really, but he's never known how to make it feel any better, and the most serious conversation he's ever had with Cashmere was about cupcakes at a party. Gloss should be the one out here comforting her. It takes Haymitch a second to remember that he hasn't even seen Gloss yet this year because the beautiful man- and probably his sister, too- are both in such high demand at the Capitol that they barely mentor at all. 

"Come on," he says, before he can second-guess his sudden ache of pity for this privileged Career tribute. "The bar right up the street is open all night."

"I'm not sleeping with you," she says, once they've settled into a booth. 

"Thank goodness," Haymitch says. "Drink."

She does, draining half the glass in a single pull. Haymitch sips his own, looks up at the screen playing the Games. There's no current action, so they're just showing recaps of Radiance's death. Even for the Hunger Games, it's a particularly gruesome one. He looks away and takes another drink.

Three glasses later, Cashmere shakes her head. "How can we keep doing this?"

"Better than thinking," Haymitch says. 

"Not the alcohol," she says, though still throws back the next shot the Capitol waiter places at her table. "The mentoring. The tributes. Year after year. Don't you want to just…"

"No." It's clear Cashmere doesn't know how to finish her sentence, because there's nothing to just do about taking down the Capitol. But if she did know, it would be traitorous to say. To agree to. To even listen without contradiction. So Haymitch counters. "The lives given in the arena save us from more violence later."

Does Cashmere think he believes it? He can't tell. She only stares morosely at the table and takes another drink.

"It's not fair," she finally says. "I've met a lot of nasty tributes from District 1. But Radiance wasn't like that. And to die like that."

Of course it wasn't fair. Haymitch had a sweet and polite tribute of his own this year. She was wide-eyed and overcome with wonder at seeing the Capitol, and thanked her stylist even after he dressed her in the ugliest coal miner costume yet. On the last night, she'd ordered hot chocolate and made sure her district partner, and Effie, and Haymitch all got mugs too.

She'd had the misfortune to be placed next to Radiance at the start of the Games. Radiance, who wore a jewel-covered gown to the interviews, strapless to show her firm arms and shoulders from years of training and abundant dinners. Who had been using weapons her entire life. Who picked up a sword at the Cornucopia and ran through the sweet girl from District 12. 

And who was now dead too.

"Yeah," he eventually says. "It's never fair."

Year 67

Was last year gory? People will forget it entirely because this one, the Sixty-Seventh run of these Games, blows anything else out of the water the second Titus starts eating the first tribute he killed. 

"He can't do that," Cecelia says into the silence of the stunned mentors.

"It's the Hunger Games," Haymitch says. "They can do anything they want."

The room is quiet again, and Haymitch wishes into it that he'd said something else, or hadn't opened his damn mouth at all. He's right, but does he always have to drag everyone around him into the same pit of gloom he rots away in all day? Now the rest of the victors have nothing to distract them from helplessly watching -

"The Gamemakers won't like this any more than we do." Finnick says.

Brutus, near him, snorts. "What are you gonna do, kid, seduce them into it?"

And Finnick smiles. "Maybe I will. Why, want to watch?" 

Haymitch watches Brutus consider - he's a man who always looks so big and aggressive and dumb, but there's something more going on in his head as he sizes up this boy, half his age and weight, and gives a nod. "They might listen to the both of us."

And suddenly, other mentors are standing to join them, and maybe Haymitch should too, but he can't make himself move. What use would he even be trying to convince a roomful of people of - of anything, really? 

Seeder, next to him, is hesitating too, glancing between the group of victors and her tribute onscreen, and hell, maybe Haymitch can at least contribute something. "Go with them," he says. "I'll cover." She nods, murmuring thanks, and heads away with the rest, and he feels just a little better, useful maybe because he doesn't mind sitting back and letting the others have the spotlight if that's what it takes to get things done.

In theory, his two surviving tributes should have an advantage right now, most mentors away talking to Gamemakers while the action's running high. In practice? They're from District Twelve. The girl is spending her time lounging around, braiding and unbraiding her hair, moving onto strips of grass when she gets bored, and normally this wouldn't be the worst idea, but she's chosen to do this on the sunny side of a hill where anyone could see her. 

Anyone ends up being her district partner, who steps out of the nearby woods and comes jogging up to her. She tenses, but doesn't move away as he approaches and flashes her an easy grin. They chat, about simple things like the arena and who's dead - what passes for normal small talk in the Hunger Games. It's all bizarrely inane until the boy reaches out to touch the braid in the girl's hair, and she flinches away from his fingers.

At once, his face goes cold and he's shouting, hand around her throat before she can back away, and in another few heartbeats the cannon fires and she slumps into the grass, dead. Her district partner takes a knife from his side and carefully, tenderly, slices away her braid and takes it with him when he leaves.

It's all happened so fast that all the other mentors are still gone, and Haymitch doesn't know what to do. Crazy tributes show up too often - District Six is dealing with their own cannibal right now - but this is Haymitch's first time dealing with the chill that he might have a tribute with a chance of making it home, and he doesn't want him to. They're all murderers, all of them who make it out, but this was - this was worse, wasn't it? 

The other tributes come back, saying they think it went well. Haymitch stares blankly at his screen, wondering if he should send his tribute food tomorrow like he normally would, like it's his job to. Imagining the reactions if he doesn't. Imagining the reactions if he does. Imagining how he'll live with himself, whatever choice he makes, something that's already too difficult sometimes. 

He never has to decide. Titus kills his tribute the next morning, hunts around for food, and finding none, pulls a knife to cut human flesh instead when a shock runs through his tracker and freezes his body still. Every victor in the Control Room lets out a sigh of relief, including Titus's mentors, and including Haymitch, relieved beyond belief despite the other feelings he's wrestled with all night. 

The people around him have done all the heavy lifting this time around. The other victors - Finnick, Brutus, Seeder, everyone who went with them. Even Titus, hero to no one else, has carved out a place in Haymitch's heart just for saving him from one more impossible choice. 

Year 68

It's the interviews and the damning words are tumbling out of the boy's mouth on national television. 

"I'm a pretty big Hunger Games fan," he'd started. Great. The Capitol will eat that up.

"My favorite victor is Brutus," he says when asked, and who doesn't love Brutus? Besides Haymitch, of course. The cameras even cut to Brutus in the crowd, who waves good-naturedly.

For the next thirty seconds, it all goes well. He references a few other fan-favorite Hunger Games moments, and he's a good storyteller- the audience laughs right on cue. Then he says it. "But I think the best victory was Haymitch. Using the force field like that was so clever. It's really cool when someone thinks outside the box like that."

According to the pack of wolf mutts that devour him on day 2, the Gamemakers don't agree. Haymitch has known this was coming, and the aching dread that's been gripping his chest for days softens a little. It's over, it's done, and it was fairly quick - he was worried the death would be much worse.

Now he's just facing down the bleak outcome of waiting for his other tribute to die. She has no skills and no chance, but a frankly mystifying amount of good luck. The District Two boy slipped in the mud chasing her from the cornucopia, and during her escape she stumbled across a survival pack another tribute had dropped while fleeing. She took a blind chance on eating some mushrooms a few days in, and somehow picked one of the only nonlethal varieties in the woods. It's kept her alive, but a few good turns by themselves aren't enough to make a victor, and Haymitch waits by the monitor day after day in a patient, wretched vigil. Eventually time catches up with her in the form of the surprising frontrunner from District Ten and a tense, drawn-out chase over a cliffside and some rocky terrain. It'll be a highlight. Her district partner would have been proud.

Year 69  

After the Games, a mentor should go home, drink themselves unconscious a few times until the memories are safely locked away, and pretend that it isn't all coming for them again next year. At least, that's what Haymitch has figured seems best, and he never had anyone else around to teach him otherwise. Problem is, he's getting worse at it every time, and he was never that good at forgetting in the first place. 

The months of nightmares before the Reaping and the constant jump of his hand to the bottle are just daily life now. So mundane that it's taken him years to notice how ever-present they are, but when he does he reaches out in carefully-coded messages to the other contacts in the rebellion, practically begging for some kind of work to do while they're all in the Capitol during the Games. He's never chosen for those tasks, because unlike the other rebel victors, he has no backup. But he needs something in his future besides the certain gloom of waiting around after his tributes die - which he can be fairly sure they will, and quickly too - so why not use the time? 

He's also noticed he feels better functional. Not good or anything, mind you, but better. 

So he arrives to the first day of the Hunger Games with errands to run, information to pass, Capitol informants to track down, though it doesn't really distract him from what he'll have to face first. The tributes are pretty run-of-the-mill, skinny and look enough alike to be siblings, though they're not.

"Should we say we are?" the boy had asked.

"What? No. Why would you do that?" Haymitch had replied, and turned to look at the girl, shaking his head. She burst into giggles, and then they were all three laughing so hard they couldn't even talk, delirious with the stress from the week. Effie came in, took a single look at them all, and walked right out, leaving Haymitch crying with laughter over the expression on her face. Odd that a sound like that could come from such an empty man.

Eventually they'd pulled themselves together, and Haymitch had rolled his eyes at them both. "Good night, clowns," he'd said.

It was a good last moment. Now he just has to watch them die. But for the first time in years, neither of them do, because the real enemy in this arena is the cold.

It's a tundra, packed with snowy fields and snowy cliffs and not much else. The Careers kill a few at the bloodbath and try to hunt through the night by following footprints, which is a fatal error for most of them. They're working hard, overheating, and so as the temperature drops and they get tired and sit down to rest, their own body cooling kills them peacefully and gently. 

After that, the Games are brutal and boring. The tributes are reduced to digging holes in the snow and huddling there all day. There are no plants to eat and no wood to start a fire. A few brave souls try to venture out and hunt game, but pickings are slim and it's mostly not worth the effort. When two of them stumble across each other, the first chance for violence in days, they instead agree to bunk together and share warmth, and the feeds in Panem drift back to other entertainment.

It's not a bad arena for untrained District Twelve tributes. Except. All the disadvantages they normally have - fewer sponsors, malnourishment, general overwhelming sense of despair - those haven't gone away just because the fighting has. Cannons fire once or twice a day for another frozen tribute, and one of Haymitch's is among them in the first week. However, the other - the boy who does not have any siblings - is one of the lucky final eight, and so Haymitch digs deep and goes to the gamblers who bet on District Twelve as an outside shot months back, and talks them up about how much a donation could pay off. He's long since traded out his rebellion-oriented appointments for quick appearances at city events. He doesn't really think it'll work, but he has to try, and if he tries hard enough then maybe he can outpace the rest of his thoughts about it.

It really almost works. The boy is the last one to die. But second place is still so very far from home.

Five months later, the first snowfall of the year comes early to District Twelve. Haymitch steps outside that morning and is caught by surprise at its oh-so-gentle start, the quick kiss of cold against his hands, the way each fragment yields into the ground, not yet strong enough to stick. It's beautiful. He's holding back tears for the entire walk to town.

Year 70

Another damn year. What's the point, Haymitch wonders for the twentieth year running, and drags himself on stage. Girl, boy, training, interview, death. He's aching with exhaustion before the whole shindig even starts.

Girl's got promise. Won't get her anywhere, but he'd have to be stupid not to see it. She's still a hair taller than her barely-fifteen district partner, has some real intent when she walks, and she's got sponsor money once she trades a good series of brash quips with Caesar Flickerman onstage. She only disagrees with Haymitch on one thing: the Cornucopia. She can make it, she promises. She'll run in- not all the way, just a little- grab something near the entrance, and sprint out of there. 

The boy was shy at first, but he's been caught up all week in the drive of his district partner. Now he doesn't want to be outdone and says he can do it too. Last year was short on natural resources, he points out, and a dash for the Cornucopia may be the only chance to get equipped for what they'll be facing. Didn't Haymitch go for the Cornucopia too?

Every mentor knows that this year is going to be intense. It has to be, after last year's viewing nightmare pulled the lowest ratings in decades. All the stops will be on show, things like mutt monsters, deadly terrain, natural disasters - what fun! - and he tells them again and again to hang back and play it safe. The crown is going to go to the best survivor, not the best fighter, and so they have to look before they leap. They sullenly agree in a way that makes him think they aren't going to listen.

Ten hours later, the gong sounds. The girl from District Twelve sprints right towards the cache in the center, and she scoops up a spear as she runs, and her fingers close around the strap of a supply pack at the same time as one of the Career boys. He doesn't have a weapon yet, and it's a fatal mistake: she's right in position to stab him, yank the bag free, and run.

Instead, she brandishes the point of her weapon in front of his face. "Drop it," she says.

He bats it aside and punches her, hard. She staggers and barely manages to bring the spear between them again. "Back off!" Her eyes are steely. "I'll run you through, I'll do it!"

The Career boy doesn't move. "Why haven't you?" he asks softly. 

She shakes her head. "Just - just give me the pack."

The moment stretches on, neither of them moving. He smiles softly. "You'd have to kill me. And I don't think you want to. So just let it go and run."

Her hand trembles on her spear. Of course she doesn't want to escape into these treacherous marshes without supplies. All she'd have to do is lunge forward, one simple hit, and she'd be set for at least a week. It would be so easy.

She backs away, turns, and flees. Haymitch swears under his breath, but he can't find it in him to blame her. The Career tribute watches her go, and winces when she takes an arrow in her back only seconds later and collapses into a heap on the ground. The boy from District Twelve is already dead too, fallen in his own run to the Cornucopia and taken down by a tribute who actually had it in them to kill.

Haymitch starts drinking in earnest then, roaming the city now that the only people who needed him are dead, but he's wandered back into the Control room when it happens. The arena floods, and the power of the dark swirling waters awakens the kind of primordial awe that will lock every viewer to the screen. Tributes are swept under, desperately clinging for any hold, and for a moment there's a horror that they've all been killed and there will be no victor at all, and then Finnick is whooping and crying, hands over his mouth, as a girl's head breaks free of the tide.

Haymitch grabs a bottle and pushes his way out of the room and outside. Annie Cresta should be dead. He's got nothing against her, but she's been mad for days and would never have made it through another fight. She should be as gone as every tribute who's ever come back to District Twelve in a box, but she's the one who got to pull through.

"And would you look at this, it's Haymitch Abernathy, folks! Care to comment on what we just saw?" Haymitch looks up and discovers he's walked right into the path of a reporter and a gaggle of city dwellers, and now there's a microphone in his face. 

"No," he says, and makes to keep walking.

The reporter pivots to stay alongside him. "Anything you'd like to say to the viewers? What about your own Games?" When Haymitch still doesn't respond, the reporter's voice turns sickeningly sweet. "Come on, give us something. How could we forget about the winner of the last Quell? And you still have the Victor's Village all to yourself! Bet it's all kind of private parties up there for you, huh?"

Ah, there's that Capitol wit. Surely the citizens, safe in their homes, are laughing over the fact that Haymitch is still the only solo Victor after two decades. The reporter still has a ghost of a smile on his face, but he's also standing back, as if afraid of how Haymitch will react.

Haymitch is curious about that himself. He's holding a bottle in his hand, and it wouldn't be hard to use as a weapon. He's certainly done it in the past. But this time around, the desire for it is gone.

Because the words don't hurt. He isn't lost over next year's chances or raring to swing his bottle at the reporter's head. He doesn't feel anything at all.

Chapter Text

For the last five years, Haymitch is empty. There's nothing left.

Year 71

Haymitch feels like a stone skipping on water: by some miracle he's still aloft, though common sense would say he should have sunk long ago. It'll happen the second he slows down. He can't stop moving or rock bottom will finally catch up with him.

So he doesn't. 

Flashes of reality make it through his head and then vanish. He cobbles together a single, continuous narrative around the simple question, what can I do to bring the Capitol down?, and stores just enough about it to keep bouncing off the water. The rest of his life doesn't stick around. Does he eat full meals every day? Where do his clothes come from? Has he talked to anyone in the district this year? On the rare occasions he thinks about it, he's not really sure. Maybe he gets all his calories from drinking.

It's, well. It's sort of the only thing he does remember to do anymore. 

He has been part of the rebellion for … some number of years now; he's stopped keeping track. He's not the only clever person on their side, but he's the only one without anything to lose. It's a fact that's surfaced before: unlike many of the other victors, he's never been forced into prostitution for a rich Capitol buyer. Haymitch has no one they can threaten. In the decades since his Games, he has made no friends, taken no lovers, found no family. On purpose, though even if he'd wanted companionship he might've had trouble finding takers. But he hasn't tried. Anyone he bonds with is a mark. 

And therefore, no one cares about Haymitch Abernathy. For so long, that's been his greatest weakness. A pain that sometimes dulls but never truly stops hurting.

But now? It's the greatest asset he can bring to the rebellion. He's the one making deals with Capitol sympathizers that are still of questionable loyalty, the one who takes point on contact with District Thirteen. What are they going to do if they find him out, kill him? Hah. 

He knows his tributes are already dead, and he knows this because he's spent the last several hours at a party where a designer named Cinna just happens to be in attendance. It can take a whole evening, trading ideas in conversations short enough to avoid suspicion. And if Haymitch can afford this much time, there's no one alive to mentor. Cornucopia bloodbath, he thinks, both of them. That sounds right. It's been a few days since and he's so many drinks in that he isn't really surprised when he collides with someone in the hallway on his way back.

"Pardon me, sweetheart," he says into an irritated face. It's Johanna, last year's victor.

Last year's? Fuck, it must be the Seventy-Second Games right now, and he's been saying it wrong all night. And he's somehow missing a year's worth of memory. He briefly considers trying to remember what happened. Thinks better of it. Turns his last trickle of brainpower towards making it to Chaff's room so he can get just one drink in pleasant company before he passes out.

Year 73?

Haymitch's liquor stash runs out during a blizzard. He barely makes it through the night before carving through snow as high as his knees in a desperate rush to town. He arrives on Ripper's porch and falls into a seizure before he can knock.

Year 74

He should welcome the nothingness. All those years of misery, all the aching grief finally poured out and just an empty cracked shell left, devoid of anything else that could hurt. Should make it all easier. He's risen above it now.

If only that's how it would really go. He's poured out all the feelings and buried them and looked the other way, but he can't get rid of them. They resurface and nip at his heels and tear down his walls, and even after all this practice he can't stop the steady march of the same emotions that have been walking alongside him all this time.

A tiny, twelve-year-old girl is reaped, and the despair creeps back in. Her sister volunteers in her place, practically unheard of in their district, and she has spark, she has fire, and as Haymitch says so, screaming at the cameras, what he means is how dare you, because next week this will be gone. He can conceive of no other outcome.

Katniss and Peeta insist that he does. He's so practiced at pain now that he starts feeling it the second he commits to trying for them. He may not know what horrors lie in store, but he knows they are coming, and he can barely stand watching them take form. Peeta whispers to a dying girl and slits her throat. Katniss wreathes Rue's body in flowers. Their bodies are ravaged by fire and stings and blades and hunger. Haymitch hurts along with them as if it will offer some sort of shield, as if he could bear the pain instead.

Partway through the Games, there is a twist: two tributes can survive this year, if they're from the same district. Haymitch knows at once that it's a lie, and a knife of white-hot anger cuts through him. Because while the victors know better, the tributes can't help but believe it. And now they have to play the parts assigned to them, a gut-wrenching prospect when Haymitch knows it isn't all acting.

Peeta isn't a master manipulator in the same way Finnick is. It's not that he can say anything. It's that he can mean the things he does say, and Haymitch saw that no matter how casually Peeta discussed his interview during prep, that every word was the heart-wrenching truth. 

And Katniss doesn't feel the same. She returns his love, she has to, but she can't make herself mean it and Peeta can't tell. This is the spectacle of the year, and Haymitch hates it, burns with rage as he hasn't in years.

It's all a retread of his very worst patterns, so strong that he can't tell when the last thing comes back to him. Maybe it was there from the moment they slapped his drink away on the train. Maybe it's when Katniss holds out the berries and he realizes what gamble she's making and he believes it's going to work. Maybe it's something he never really lost in the first place. After all these years, maybe it turns out he's never really forgotten how to hope.

Chapter Text

Year 77

He knows Katniss and Peeta have been working on it. Their book of the fallen, pages of records of every person they've lost. Ever since they started, he's known there is no escaping what he will have to do, but he avoids it for months and turns his mind to the other pieces of his life he is trying to build. 

What would have been the seventy-seventh Reaping Day comes and goes. There are memorial events across Panem, even a small ceremony in District Twelve. It is probably solemn, and appropriate, and lovely. Haymitch does not attend. 

But he also knows it's time. 

He calls Effie and asks for the list of names, in order, wanting to be sure all of them are right. She reads him every single one without complaint. It takes almost an hour, because they take the time to check each spelling, and Haymitch runs the memories he has by her, to make sure they're real. They are. 

A few weeks later, the envelope stuffed full of photos arrives in District Twelve. Effie's carefully labeled every one with a name and a year, and Haymitch brings them in to Katniss and Peeta. They're not surprised. They've just been waiting patiently, as always, ready to meet him where he is. They settle in to listen and to write, and over the next few days he shares the stories in pieces, in rushes, in chuckles, and in heavy silences. He has mentored forty-six tributes besides the two in front of him, forty-six people who by all rights should have no chance at being remembered. 

But Haymitch is a rebel to his core, and he will make it otherwise. In all his years, in all his drinks, in all his failed attempts at detachment, he has not forgotten them. Not one.