Chapter Text
The thing about being constantly intoxicated that people don’t seem to understand is, you get quite good at it. I may stumble and slur - but I can still see, can still watch - the way I always have. I’ve always been an observer - it made me smart as a kid, it mostly just hurts as an adult. I see the good, soon to be destroyed anyway, the bad and the ugly. And sometimes I see so much I have to drink again until I stop seeing, stop noticing anything at all.
But that’s how I knew when he first told me - that poor boy with the baby face and those townie blue eyes. I knew it wasnt a gimmick, some strategy he was trying to play - he really cared about that poor scared girl from the seam.
I’d seen those eyes peeking out the back window of the bakery - following Burdock’s girl as she strutted off after her father making a trade when they were only kids. Once you notice something once, it’s hard not to see it again and again. When I wasn’t alert enough to time my trips into town around the school bells and accidentally stumbled by when they were leaving school, there he was - staring after her as she walked home with her little sister. Most annoyingly, when the unlucky combination of my need for bread, the boy being at the counter, and the girl trading with the baker at the back door coincided - well good luck trying to get the stupid thing to grab you a loaf or take your money with his neck almost fully swivelled back to catch a glimpse of the girl.
So it wasn’t much of a surprise when he told me how he felt about her, how desperately he wanted to keep her alive. What was a surprise is finding that the feeling seemed to be mutual. And getting everyone else on board to see the same. I may never have actually spoken to Katniss Everdeen before that reaping - but I know about seam kids in general, I even was one, a lifetime ago. And I know loss. The kind that ripped my family from me, the kind that took her father and robbed her mother of everything she once was. I know what those losses can do to a person, make them all walled up and scared to open up again. Poor girl. Poor boy.
He doesn’t stand a chance - at life or love, now. But I can’t help but feel the twist of hope as I see the way he looks at her, the way her walls come crashing down under his gaze. She says something about help at the table that night and a look of understanding passes between them. She looks as helpless as that poor starving 10 year old child again. I don’t know what it means. I don’t care - I tell myself. Don’t get attached, Haymitch. Leave them to their fates. But I can’t help but wonder- in another life - could a boy like him loving her have changed everything? I guess it’s too bad we live in this life.
— — —
I can’t believe my luck as I watch them awkwardly try to navigate this performance - him, outwardly adoring her and blissfully happy. Her, confused as hell. It’s so wholesome, so tender - so wrong for the arena. It’s almost more shocking than the 18 deaths that got us here. I can see her walls coming down, the slight upturn of her lips when she notices his adoring gaze, the quiet determination with which she cares for him and the fretful worry as she wrings her hands and tries to catch her breath from fear when he’s not watching.
I hadn’t had much of a chance to do this whole thing - flirt and chase and catch. With Lenore Dove, it had been a friendship that turned to love - we were so young when we met. But I’d seen enough of it, her mother and father for example. She may resemble Burdock but she’s certainly Asterid March’s girl. Stubborn and clueless. How many times had Burdock confessed his undying love for her with every foraged plant, smile and serenade - how many times had she cocked her head sideways like Katniss does now, confused at his attention and not sure what to make of him. Katniss certainly didn’t learn to flirt from her mother - though I guess when you’re the town beauty there may not be much need for those games.
Watching them gives me a stab of longing for my childhood and a pang of hope for the future. I may not have been enough to break this system, but together, maybe they can be…
——-
Fucking Hell not again, I groan being ripped from sleep having only passed out an hour before. Her screams are echoing across the train again.
And where’s the boy I wonder - roaming back and forth from one side of this forsaken train to the other, I presume. Those two need a drink - I think, before feeling immediately guilty about it.
As I’m trying to will myself out of bed to see if she’s alright I hear his lopsided footsteps crashing past my door. He’s finally heard her I guess….
The walls aren’t thin enough to hear what he says but his determination in bringing her out from the drug induced sleep, his tender assurances of her safety are clear. Good job, boy. I think to myself, lying back down in the plush bed. I may actually get a few more hours of sleep tonight I think, taking another swig from the bottle on my bedside table. I wait for the sounds of him leaving her room and going back to bed that never come. Huh. Good job boy I laugh to myself.
After that, his bed remains unused and I hear them talking softly as they try to sleep - sometimes their tones are worried and clipped, but mostly it just sounds like two kids, talking, joking, - sometimes they even laugh.
I fall into sleep comforted myself, sometimes even smiling, as I hear their steady chatter or quiet whispers. Fuck, Haymitch you’ve really gone soft. But I can’t help it, maybe there can be winners of the games if there’s two?
———
I hear the growl of frustration come from my chest. “No, no. Don’t believe me. I wouldn’t know!” I stand and begin to pace around the spacious and modernly decorated living room of the District 3 living quarters.
“Come on Haymitch, it’s going to be hard enough to keep the girl alive. How can we guarantee them both?” rasps Finnick.
“Well, technically we can’t guarantee anything.” Beetee adds, “but I agree with Finnick, Haymitch. We will have a hard enough time getting Katniss to the rendezvous - we can’t split our focus on Peeta too.”
“Fine!” I throw my hands up in exasperation. “You do your thing - just see how well that works for you.” I drop my voice below the reach of the inevitable surveillance video Beetee says he’s disabled (you can never be too careful). “I’m telling you - no boy, no mockingjay.”
Finnick scoffs “why not?” Looking skeptically at Mags who is quietly taking it all in. “You’re not telling me she’s that attached? Haymitch, it's clearly an act…”
I shake my head. “It’s not”
“Oh I know, I know, he’s obviously smitten but she’ll be alright - won’t she? He seems hell bent on self sacrifice anyway so I’m not even sure we will be able to get in his way!”
I grunt in frustration. “Has it been that long that you all don’t remember? What it’s like to lose the person you love, the person who brings you some kind of peace? The person you rely on? Because I remember. She loves him, it may not have penetrated that thick fucking skull of hers yet but I can tell you, Katniss is in love with him.”
“A bad place to be when you’re…” Wiress begins, wandering into the conversation again.
“In the arena” Beetee finishes for her softly, his gaze a thousand miles away.
“Are you sure?” Finnick asks, still sceptical.
“Trust me” I say “we’ve got to keep them both, without him, we’ll have nothing.”
— —
I need a drink.
I stand outside her room, stock still though I want to be pacing. Trying to calm my heartrate that’s been beating out of my chest since the bombers rained down fire on district 8 with her roaming around in nothing but a costume with a fucking helmet. Fuck Haymitch what were you thinking? I resist the urge to kick something and try to take another deep breath in. She’s fine. I tell myself. She’s alright.
When her mother and sister leave her bedside, I start my vigil. It takes about an hour for her to wake - I pass the time preparing an excellent speech about adhering to my advice through her earpiece and eating her lunch - it’s not half bad.
Once I’m done ranting at her, I still feel the ache of anger and frustration coursing through me. And since the only person I should be mad at is myself, and that’s really not as fun, especially without the bottle to drown yourself in afterwards, I’m in his hospital room next.
“Gale is it?” I ask rudely.
“You know my name.” He says with a scowl. Well, I’m glad he’s going to make this easy for me.
“Yeah that’s right. I know your name. Big hero - who could forget.”
He just looks confused. “What’re you…”
“Great work out there boy! You know I thought since you go around with a fucking sour look on your face, brooding in the corners and making moon eyes at Everdeen that you actually gave a damn about her but clearly I’ve been mislead.”
“What? I…” he tries to interject but I’m not done. It may not be fair, in fact, I know it’s not fair for me to compare the boy to Peeta - but when I think about the danger he allowed her in today I really don’t care.
“Running into battle like a big man” I’m nearly shouting now. “She’s barely well enough to get through the day without being drugged, she needs protection not a battle!”
I remember the way Peeta had threatened to drag himself after her screaming her name when she planned to go through the feast, how we’d had to drug him to hold him back from protecting her to his death, and I feel overwhelmed with a feeling I haven’t allowed myself to acknowledge for so long - I miss him. Peeta, with his easy humour and quiet strength, Peeta, who would do whatever it took to keep Burdock's girl from harm. She needs Peeta…but she doesn’t have him, and that’s probably on me too.
“Do better” I spit towards Gale, unfortunately it’s clear to me, I’m really saying it to myself…
— —
I’ve seen it too many times now not to notice the signs. After their first games, when she began to retreat back into herself in fear on that train ride home, when the boy’d been tortured beyond recognition and she lost all hope quicker than a flash, and now as she paces my living room wringing her hands and wiping a single tear from her cheek. This is Katniss, preparing to run.
It’s remarkable really for a girl who, at 17, faced down her oppressors and brought down an evil regime. Lethal with a bow, scared shitless with the prospect of her happiness. I get it - once you’ve lost what she and I have lost, it gets harder and harder to trust that anything good can last.
“He says he wants to marry me”
I only grunt in reply.
“Marriage, Haymitch. Did you hear me?” Her voice rising in near hysteria.
“Yeah I heard ya, but my jaws not exactly on the floor, sweetheart. The kids been making moon eyes at you since he was 5 - did you really not see this one coming” I resist the urge to roll my eyes at her.
She just sits next to me, pressing her palms to her forehead in defeat.
“You live together. I assume that spare room isn’t getting any use…”
She blushes as she stands to turn away from me.
“Shut up, Haymitch” she says - but it’s half hearted.
“What’re you so scared of sweetheart? You think the boys going somewhere? Cuz he’s not - I’ve seen him go to hell and back for you - there’s nothing in this new world that will tear him away now.”
She turns back to me with tears shining in her eyes and her voice is weak. “I can think of about a million things…”
“I know, I know that. But that’s no way to live.” I tell her, my own voice starting to break. “You’ve fought so hard, it’s time to find out what you fought for, kid.”
And when they do it, toast their bread and say their words, just the two of them, they come right over to my place afterwards bearing cake and champagne to celebrate. The boy looks almost delirious - equal measure shocked at his fortune and in absolute awe of his bride. And she, she just looks contented. Settled and secure in a way I’ve never seen her. The minute his hand reaches for hers she breaks into the most radiant smile, and at the end of the night, once we’ve had our fill of cake and found out just what a lightweight she is with champagne, the way she nestles into his arms when he lifts her effortlessly to take her home gives me a chill in the best way. They made it - everything we’d been through together - and now their whole lives ahead of them. There’s hope after all…
——