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“Oh, Haymitch,” Effie winced as she took in the sight before her.
She should have guessed this year would be a bad year. The 60th Hunger Games. Ten years since Haymitch won his games. District Twelve citizens tended to steer clear of her, but there were a few who would hang around the train station the day before Reaping Day. The day that Effie arrived, alone since the 51st Hunger Games where Haymitch reacted…less than perfectly when Effie showed up with his new prep team and Haymitch made it very clear how he felt about the change.
So the day before Reaping Day, Effie Trinket arrived in District Twelve and took on the task of making the District Twelve victor presentable. It was a much more difficult task with the twenty-six year old man who pickled his brain than the sweet, terrified sixteen-year-old boy who helped clean up her makeup, but it was her job all the same and Effie did it. Maybe not without a bit of complaining, but getting Haymitch to argue with her was better than dragging around the catatonic zombie that Effie found herself constantly fighting against.
Anger was better than apathy when it came to Haymitch. Effie learned that early on as well. It was not her fault if others did not understand this, particularly any stylists who saw fit to try and complain about Haymitch’s behavior.
This year, though, Effie opened the door and knew that it would be a difficult battle. Light from the open door and small streams that fought their way between the curtain blinds played on glass bottles throughout the house. The air smelled stale and heavy with dust and Effie followed the sound of snoring into the living room. Haymitch did not used to snore. Effie blamed the latest development on the alcohol.
Alcohol. Effie still had that vest. The one embroidered with cocktail glasses that Haymitch wore for his first interview with Caesar Flickerman. It hung in the back of her closet, safe when the other outfits smoldered in her family’s fireplace after a night of too much champagne and a horrible, twisting feeling in her gut, three weeks after the 51st Games. When everyone was still celebrating and all Effie could think about was the little boy who begged her to let him go home and suddenly, all she could think about was a girl who spoke her mind and a boy so much smarter than any of Effie’s classmates and a strange little girl with a fondness for snakes.
When she grabbed that vest, the last item- she just held it. She didn’t throw it, the way she threw the others, she held it in her lap and her fingers played over the embroidery. It had been funny, back then. Cute. Putting the rascal bootlegger into an alcohol themed item, making him stand out. Now, it just felt like she cursed him. And then it ended up hanging safely in the back of her closet. A reminder.
“Haymitch!” Effie tried. It was always better when she did not startle him. He was draped over his couch, one arm flopped over his eyes. If not for the snoring, Effie would not have been able to say if Haymitch was alive or not. She tried again. “Haymitch Abernathy!”
That startled him. He rolled himself off the couch, fumbling for something. A knife, most likely. It was usually a knife that Effie found herself staring down.
Hands on her hips, eyebrow cocked, she looked him over as he gathered his bearings – which, fortunately, did not include a sharp pointy object this time. He needed a shave and a haircut, as always, but a bath certainly needed to precede those two. Hopefully, he was aware enough to handle that task himself. There had been occasions where he had not been and Haymitch never appreciated that later. His clothes were a whole other matter, as usual, but Effie sincerely considered burning the ones he currently wore. They looked disturbingly close to the undershirt and pants that he wore when Effie dropped him off two months prior, after he had been requested in the Capitol for some parties. Haymitch was certainly not the most popular victor, not by a long shot, but winning a Quarter Quell meant that he would never find himself spending the whole year in District Twelve, Effie was certain.
Especially since he seemed to be someone’s pet project of misery, but Effie was not supposed to know anything about that if the strange conversations she had with Plutarch Heavensbee said anything.
“You need a bath,” Effie said as Haymitch blinked up blearily at her.
Haymitch scowled. “You.”
“Me.” Effie sighed, moving forward to get him on his feet. It took a second for Haymitch to help. She forced a smile, a cheery tone. “Come along. Tomorrow is a-”
“Big, big day!” Haymitch mocked with a too-wide smile and dead eyes.
“Exactly,” Effie beamed as they made their way to the stairs.
“Happy birthday to me,” Haymitch muttered under his breath as they started up the staircase.
Effie ignored the words. She made the mistake, once, of giving Haymitch a birthday gift for his twenty-first birthday. A small flask. She hadn’t loved the idea of giving Haymitch something associated with liquor, but she figured a flask would help keep him more stable in the Games room, since alcohol technically wasn’t allowed. He could claim to have any number of drinks in the flask and no one would bat an eye, Effie had thought.
The flask had been unceremoniously thrown at her head in the train, in front of that years children. It clipped her temple. She needed stitches. Peacekeepers had tased him and it had taken all of Effie’s skills to convince the Gamemakers that Haymitch was not a security risk.
Along with half of her salary that year, but that was neither here nor there.
That years children had been terrified of him. It hadn’t helped since that was the first year where the children were kids who grew up knowing Haymitch as District Twelve’s Victor. The previous years had been kids who recognized Haymitch from school, which had started the twisting, sour feeling in Effie’s stomach. Then, kids who knew Haymitch as their older siblings’ classmate. It had taken far less time than Effie thought to get to the children who, logically, knew Haymitch was once like them, but mostly recognized him from sitting on a stage at Reaping Day. And that first year, already wary, they stayed as far away from him as physically possible and…
It was a bad year. Effie took the blame for that one.
Effie sat Haymitch down on the toilet lid and fiddled with the shower. The hot water took time, not like her shower back home, but it gave her time to assess Haymitch’s condition. He was well enough to bathe himself, Effie determined. Clearer in the eyes than she expected, actually.
“I hate you,” Haymitch said. The words did not sting and he said them less like an insult and more like the sky was blue.
“Well, you do not make it very easy to like you, either,” Effie said, bright and cheery as ever. “I will leave you to this. Here.” She handed him the small bag she had carried with her, where sweatpants and a soft t-shirt lay inside.
Haymitch scowled, as expected, but took the bag.
“I’ll set up in your room. It wouldn’t kill you to get a haircut more often. Or shave,” Effie said.
“Fuck off.”
“With soap, Haymitch,” Effie said as she left the bathroom.
“Fuck off!” A solid thump against the bathroom door made Effie jump just slightly as she closed it.
Good. They were getting somewhere, then.
Effie busied herself, setting up in one of the spare bedrooms where she stored some of her supplies during the year. A straight razor. Shaving cream. A pair of haircutting scissors. Haymitch never went into the room, whether out of respect for Effie (unlikely) or simply forgetting the rooms existence (likely). She wiped down the large mirror that hung over the dresser that she used as a makeshift vanity, pulling the stool out of the closet. It used to live in the kitchen, but Effie brought it up years ago when Haymitch first needed a haircut and shave and made it abundantly clear that no one he did not know would be allowed near his neck with something sharp.
“It’s because I was there before,” Effie told Plutarch one day, also years ago now. When it became clear that, no matter how good of a job Effie did, no matter how badly other districts or stylists or even jobs may want her, she was going nowhere. District Twelve’s Escort referred to her the same way as Effie Trinket.
“So was I,” Plutarch said, almost pouting. It was back in his first year as an official Gamemaker and, while Effie did not know why Plutarch continued trying with Haymitch, Effie knew his attempts were being strongly rebuked at every singular turn.
Effie took a sip of the sparkling wine Plutarch gave her, before saying, “You are a brilliant man. I am sure you are well-aware of whatever difference might exist between who I was to Haymitch before his games and who you were.”
And while Plutarch decidedly did not answer Effie’s question, his slightly sour face said enough. Even by then, these conversations were not new to Effie.
Beetee. Mags. Even Wiress, though Effie left that conversation even more baffled than conversations with Plutarch. Haymitch entertained them, at the very least, but never for long and Effie found herself left talking more to Victors than she ever expected to in her life.
After all, the Hunger Games were always Prosepina’s goal. Not hers. No. Effie had been content to find herself a nice fashion house, settle herself into basic styling or modeling. But then she answered that phone call and found herself in an orange apartment with an arm full of old clothes and staring at children. Barely younger than Prosepina herself.
And then there was a Victor. And the trials that came with being a Victor, especially one who came home to only tragedy. House fire. Appendicitis. Shallow, Effie always said to herself, take what you are given and accept it. It’s easier to accept it. It’s better to accept it (it used to be easy). In the end, however it came to be, did it matter? The sixteen-year-old grew and twisted and became a man who needed translating and, apparently, the only translator people found came in an Effie-shaped package.
Which Effie did not understand at all. Haymitch was not that difficult to understand. Perhaps difficult to manage, since he tended to have a very specific response to people caring about him that usually involved throwing things, but certainly not to understand. Beetee seemed baffled, though. Fitting, because Beetee baffled Effie, particularly with his obsession with potatoes.
Effie wiped down the mirror. Dust collected on it in the time she had been away, two months since she last entered this room. It seemed too much dust, but Effie wasn’t sure how dust collected in a house devoid of housekeepers. As she finished her tidying, she heard the water shut off and waited to the sound of rummaging. The bathroom door opened and heavy footsteps came to the room.
“Sit,” Effie gestured to the stool.
“Fuck you,” Haymitch muttered as he shuffled over.
“You really should expand your vocabulary,” Effie commented as she started smearing the shaving cream. “It is getting rather redundant.”
“No comments on my colorful language, then?” Haymitch asked.
Effie pursed her lips as she picked up the straight razor. “Plenty. But I care more when it is in front of children. It is improper.”
“More improper then sending them to their violent doom?”
Effie swallowed against the lump that formed in her throat, avoiding his eyes as she carefully shaved away the facial hair. “It is how we honor the dead.”
Because what else was there to say? How else to explain the last ten years of Effie’s life, that made everything so much harder than it needed to be?
“Yeah. Course.” Haymitch laughed sardonically, the picture of perfect misery.
A beautiful fool, I wish you were a beautiful fool, like your sister – those were the words her grandmother said when Effie turned eighteen, when her grandmother got lost in thought and spoke of the dark days and the days before the Hunger Games. When Effie said that the games were necessary, a necessary evil, and her grandmother looked at her with such disappointment that Effie wanted the floor to swallow her. Her teachers had praised her for such words, said that Effie was so brilliant for seeing past the pleasantries and focusing on the true meaning of the Games, and yet her grandmother…
Her grandmother died before Effie went to university and Effie tried to forget those last conversations. Then a phone call came and Effie answered with an armful of clothes and proved a little too competent for her own good.
Effie said nothing as she started on Haymitch’s hair.
Tomorrow, she would pull two names from two bowls. Tomorrow, Effie would take on two new charges to shepherd and coach through the next two weeks. Tomorrow, Effie would try to play mediator between two terrified kids and their catatonic mentor.
Tonight, Effie needed to make Haymitch presentable. Tonight, Effie made sure Haymitch drank water and ate a meal and went to bed, even if he did not sleep.
“He isn’t that difficult,” Effie always found herself saying when they got back to the Capitol and Effie never knew if she was telling a truth or a lie.
Effie wasn’t sure what truth was anyway.