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He'd been drunk, asleep next to her grave, when he felt Tam Amber throw it down harshly so it hit him on the forehead, before proceeding to shout himself hoarse.
‘How could you do this to her? Fall apart at her grave like an animal put down for slaughter? Did you forget her dreams of freedom? Dreams she died singing of? Will you carry them on with you or drown them in more bottles of your wretched sins?’
Haymitch couldn't hear, not through the haze in his mind, his head cradled in the lilies around her grave, more interested in the little thing he'd thrown at his forehead. Simple, old, with vines winding around it, embellished into the metal with the sort of expertise that only Tam Amber could have. But, it was the inside of the ring that caught his eye, and his breath, taking it from him like a thief atoning for his theft.
‘Lest we die unbloomed.’
Not words of love or a promise of forever. Even in her daydreams of her home with him, she took him away from this hell to a place where death didn't chase their footsteps. Bound into metal now, for a wedding that wouldn't be, he watched Tam Amber hobble away, the bruise of frustration he left on Haymitch's shin with his walking stick his last act of care.
The ring, it hung off a thin chain and rested on his heart, right where the flint striker used to be. The silver had darkened with age, and all the days he took it off and it turned over and over between his fingers, as if trying to call her home.
Today, unsurprisingly, was one of those days.
The boy was giddy, the light in his cerulean eyes crazed, Haymitch noted mildly, as he watched him twist and turn the small length of rope, dressed in his borrowed suit as they waited together.
A lovely crazed, if Haymitch had to admit, as if the joy in his heart was an unending spring and all he was was the meadow that was home to it. Finnick used to be brighter, sunlit on the darkest of nights.
That light, Haymitch doubted, would ever return. This crazed glitter in his eyes was all there was left of it, but Haymitch would take anything of the boy that returned, the boy they lost, and were still losing to, those claws of greed. He would take anything for his boy to feel at peace.
“You can't have a wedding without a ring,” he said mildly, surprising himself and Finnick, who's fingers stilled
“Rings aren't a thing in 4,” he said dismissively, the lie smooth from the years of practice, not looking at Haymitch. That was a lie, even he knew that. In 4, it was tradition to ask your mother for some money for the ring. Even a single coin did the job. It was a sign of blessing, not wealth. A job that was supposed to be Mags'. Haymitch looked away again as Finnick spoke again, his voice light, unweighted by the pain he was in before. “‘Sides, can't find one down here, can I?”
Down here, under the layers of earth and metal that surrounded them from every side, that suffocated him everyday. Haymitch knew Finnick had always wanted to marry by the sea. His heart ached, as another dream was turned to dust by reality.
He rubbed the metal between his fingers again, his skin memorising the vines and the words, the promises and the dreams they held in their small body. The promises and the dreams that were once meant to be his. He took a deep breath and held it out, shrugging.
“Can't you?” He asked, the mask of nonchalance and indifference back in place, as Finnick stared at the thin band in the palm of his calloused hand before picking it up cautiously. He knew, he knew exactly what it was, so the following question didn't surprise Haymitch.
“Are you sure?” He whispered, the words so soft Haymitch is sure he imagined it. The hesitance is familiar, the kind that Finnick showed when Haymitch used to unceremoniously dump a bag of candy in his lap to keep him quiet on those days Mags asked him to watch the kid. He was so much smaller then, so much brighter then, a plethora of questions quelled by a simple bag of sweets that his new friend had brought him.
God, they have killed his sweet boy.
“Of course I am,” he said gruffly, not looking at Finnick, choosing to stare at the blank, metal wall instead. Wars raged on both sides of it and fear saturated the air they breathed. And yet Haymitch pressed his face into the top of Finnick's head when the boy hugged him, the action familiar.
“Thank you.”
”Don't mention it.”
Ashes, they still lingered in every breath he took. Even the weeks that had passed hadn't been enough to let the air clear. He felt the years of breathing them in aching in his bones.
Coin still sounded as insane as she did the first time he met her, Katniss still looked as lifeless as she did in the beginning of it all. The dead walked around them in circles, agitated even in rest, as if determined to follow Haymitch around, to haunt his every breath.
And across the table, he saw the ring glint dully on the back of Annie's hand, where it rested subtly on her abdomen, the action making his heart sink from the weight of the grief of their sunlit boy's death as it finds him again.
‘Lest we die unbloomed.’ Lenore Dove had dreamt with him. And he'd prayed for their boy to, gave him the ring as a blessing too. Perhaps it was him that carried the curse, the curse to bring ruin to everyone he would ever love.
A glint of cerulean caught on the vase with death flowers across the room. He'd never hear the ugly, snorting laugh muffled into the sleeve of a sweater again, one that would be followed with a joke that had lost its charm years ago. He blinked, unsurprised when she asked him if he wanted to bring home more destruction. He wished he hadn't silenced him with a bag of candies, of all things.
God, he'd killed his boy.