Archive of Our Own

The kettle had boiled twice before she remembered to pour the tea. The silence was heavier than the steam curling above her chipped porcelain mug. Somewhere outside, wind flirted with the shutters. Inside, the world was still — as if even the house was holding its breath.

Effie sat at the kitchen table, pen in hand, notebook splayed open.

There were no clocks here. No ticking reminders of passing time. Just the weight of too many words unsaid, and a man she used to loathe — or admire — or both — breathing in the next room.

So she wrote.

Letter One
Tuesday, I Think

Dear Haymitch,

You leave your socks everywhere.

I thought I would start with something trivial. Something safe. Something that won't make my throat burn or my hands shake.

You leave them in the hallway. One time, beside the woodpile. Once, inexplicably, on top of the cupboard, as though you'd thrown them like darts. Sometimes I think you do it to annoy me. But most days, I think you forget that anyone else is here. Or maybe you hope I'm not.

That's fair.

When they told me I’d be sent here — to "rest" while District 12 found its footing again — I said yes before they’d finished the sentence. I didn’t ask where. I didn’t ask with whom. I assumed I’d be alone. I’ve become rather good at assuming I’m alone.

Imagine my surprise when the driver pulled up to a cabin with a porch and a creaky swing, and you opened the door.

You looked just as startled.

I almost turned around and asked the driver to take me back to the Capitol ruins. To the dust and broken glass and memories charred at the edges. That would’ve been easier than this.

You looked older. No — not older. You looked tired. Like someone had finally taken the last piece of you and you’d stopped pretending to care. But your eyes — they were the same. I’ve never known what to do with your eyes. They saw too much, even before the war.

You didn’t say anything, and neither did I. That might’ve been the first honest moment we’ve ever shared.

I took the guest room.

That first night, I cried into a pillow with feathers so old they poked through the fabric. I cried until my eyes burned and my ribs ached. I think you knew. The next morning, there was tea on the stove and toast that smelled like you tried. Not enough to be good at it, but enough to mean something.

I didn’t thank you. I don’t know why.

I watched you from the window that day. Sitting on the porch, whittling something out of a stick like you needed your hands to be busy so your mind wouldn’t be. You didn’t speak to me. I didn’t speak to you. I think we were both grateful for the silence.

But here’s the thing: silence can only hold so much. Eventually, it spills.

So I started writing. Not to send, of course. Don’t flatter yourself. These aren’t love letters. Or maybe they are, in some strange, twisted way that love always is — born of tragedy and terror and two people who never should’ve mattered to each other but somehow did.

I don’t know what I’m doing, Haymitch. I don’t know how to be this version of myself. The one with unpainted nails and split ends and a permanent chill in her spine. I don’t know who I am without my wigs and my shoes and my clipboard of tributes I couldn’t save.

I don’t know how to be here, with you.

You don’t talk about her. About Katniss. About Peeta. About all the ways you failed them — or think you did. But I see it in the way your jaw clenches when the radio static gets too loud. In the way you stare at the same spot on the floor for hours like it owes you something.

I think you’re grieving.

I think I am too.

You lost children. I lost illusions. You lost friends. I lost a city. You lost a purpose. I lost the mask I didn’t know I’d worn for so long.

What are we supposed to do with all that loss?

I don’t expect an answer. This is just me filling the silence.

Filling the space where maybe, once, you would’ve said something cruel just to get a reaction, and I would’ve smiled too brightly just to hide that it worked.

But we’re not those people anymore, are we?

Maybe we never were.

Maybe we were always something else entirely, and the war stripped us down until we could see it.

Or maybe I’m tired and cold and romanticizing a man who drinks too much and leaves his socks in inconvenient places.

(You really do leave them everywhere, Haymitch.)

I think I’ll make stew tonight. You don’t eat enough unless I put it in front of you. I don’t know if that’s stubbornness or depression or both. Either way, you’ll eat, and I won’t comment on how you still chew like you expect someone to take the food away.

One day, maybe, you’ll talk to me.

Until then, I’ll write.

And I won’t send.

Effie.

The fireplace popped, low and lazy, casting orange shadows across the worn floorboards. Rain drizzled against the roof — a whisper more than a storm. Effie didn’t sleep well when it rained. Too many things sounded like footsteps in the dark now.

She sat at the table with a blanket draped around her shoulders and a pen in her hand, willing her thoughts to hold still long enough to become something honest.

Letter Two
Sunday, or Maybe Monday

Dear Haymitch,

Today, you made eggs.

That doesn’t sound like much, does it? But it was the first time you cooked anything on purpose since I arrived. I was halfway down the stairs when I smelled them — burnt edges, too much pepper, a hint of whatever canned thing you’d mixed in. I stood there for a full minute, barefoot on the second step, just listening to the sound of you moving around in the kitchen like it was normal. Like any of this was normal.

You didn’t say anything when I walked in. Just slid a plate across the table and grunted.

I didn’t say thank you. Again.

But I ate it. All of it. Even the crunchy bits.

There’s something about eating food that someone else made for you — something more vulnerable than I expected. Or maybe that’s just what happens when someone like me, who spent so long pretending to be polished and untouchable, realizes she can be soft. That she wants to be.

You’ve seen me without mascara now. That feels more intimate than the time I cleaned blood off your knuckles in the Capitol bathrooms.

(Do you remember that? I do.)

I watched you from across the table today. You kept your eyes on your plate, but your hand trembled when you held the fork. You covered it quickly, but I noticed. I always notice.

I wanted to ask if you were okay, but I don’t think you would’ve answered. And I’m not sure I could’ve handled it if you had.

Here’s the thing about silence: it’s loud.

I hear so much in the things you don’t say. The way your chair scrapes across the floor when you leave the table. The way you don’t close your bedroom door all the way at night, like you’re listening for something, or someone. The way you sit on the porch for hours, staring into nothing like it’s going to stare back.

Sometimes I want to scream, just to break the quiet.

Instead, I talk to the teapot. And the radio. And the moths that gather near the window when I forget to draw the curtains.

Last night, I read one of those trashy romance novels I found in the drawer. The kind with the shirtless man on the cover and a heroine with a name like Savannah or Isabella. I laughed so hard I nearly cried. Maybe I did cry. It’s hard to tell the difference these days.

I thought of asking if you wanted to read it next, but the image of you with that book made me snort aloud, and then I was laughing into a pillow, trying not to wake you. You didn’t wake up. Or maybe you did, and you just didn’t care.

You’re good at pretending to sleep through things. Like trauma. And people.

This is a terrible letter.

You probably wouldn’t understand half of it even if you did read it, which — again — you won’t. These are private. This is mine. My way of remembering that I exist. That I feel things, even when it’s safer not to.

But I’ll tell you something I’m not supposed to admit:

I miss them.

Katniss. Peeta. Even Haymitch-the-public-menace. I miss us, in some awful, broken way.

Do you remember the train?

Of course you do. You probably try not to. But I do.

I remember your boots on the table. The way you used to drink yourself into incoherence before we even reached the halfway mark to the Capitol. I remember the way your eyes lit up — just for a second — whenever Peeta said something too good for this world. The way you watched Katniss like you were constantly bracing for her to implode. Or explode.

I remember fighting with you in the dining car. I remember pretending not to care about you. I remember watching you sleep in the corner booth, head resting against the window, face so peaceful I almost forgave you for everything.

I remember thinking — maybe if things were different…

But they weren’t.

And now they are.

And I don’t know what to do with that.

I want to ask if they’re okay. If you’ve heard anything. I want to ask what we’re doing here, locked away like forgotten relics. But I’m afraid that if I open my mouth, everything inside me will come out in one ugly, messy scream, and I won’t be able to stop.

So instead, I write to you in secret, like a girl writing to a boy who doesn’t love her back.

Not that I love you. That would be ridiculous.

(But sometimes I think I did. Or I could’ve. If we weren’t us.)

God, what am I doing?

I made soup today. You didn’t eat it.

You said you weren’t hungry, and I didn’t press. But I left a bowl on the stove anyway, covered it with a plate like my mother used to do. It was gone by morning.

I think that counts for something.

Effie.

Days passed and Effie wrote this letter late at night, her coat still damp from the walk back, her cheeks raw from the wind. She had meant to go into town and return with supplies. Instead, she came back full of feelings she didn’t know what to do with, Haymitch would probably not want to hear about it yet — so she decided to pour them into this.

Letter Three
I Think It’s Still Saturday

Haymitch,

I saw them.

Katniss. Peeta.

I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t planning on… anything, really. I went to town for matches and powdered milk and soap — practical things. I was going to get in and get out without being noticed. Just another face in a place that’s trying to rebuild itself from ash.

But there they were, outside the bakery. She was carrying a little cloth bag of bread, and he was saying something quiet that made her smile. Not a full smile. You know how she is — always half-wild, half-guarded. But it was real.

They looked okay, Haymitch.

Not healed. But breathing.

Alive.

They saw me, of course. It’s hard to miss a woman in a lilac coat and heels meant for a Capitol ballroom picking her way across muddy streets like she belongs there.

Katniss waved first. Tentatively. Like she wasn’t sure if I’d wave back.

I did.

Peeta gave me one of those soft, sad smiles. The kind that makes your chest ache. He looked at me like I was something from a dream he barely remembers.

We spoke. Briefly. Politely.

Katniss asked if I was staying nearby. I lied and said I was only passing through. Peeta didn’t believe me — I could tell by the way his eyes lingered — but he didn’t say anything.

They asked about you.

I said you were fine. Grouchy. Predictable. I didn’t say you still wince in your sleep, or that you sing to yourself sometimes when you think I’m not listening. I didn’t say that I watch you like I’m trying to decipher a language I’ve only just started to learn.

I didn’t say that I miss you when I’m standing five feet away from you.

God, what’s wrong with me?

I walked home with their voices in my head. Katniss’s wary kindness. Peeta’s quiet steadiness. And that stupid ache in my chest that’s been sitting there since before the war even ended.

They belong to each other. That’s clear. Even with everything they’ve lost — or maybe because of it — they fit. They lean into each other like they know it’s safe.

I used to think I’d find something like that one day.

Not a prince. Not a fairy tale. Just someone who saw me. Understood me. Chose me anyway.

But I’m only getting older and hiding in a safe house with a man who barely speaks unless he’s swearing at the weather, and I’m writing him letters I never plan to send because I’m too afraid he wouldn’t want them.

I don’t think I know how to be wanted in the quiet, everyday kind of way.

I’m good at parties. At dressing up and smiling and making people believe I’m worth admiring. But underneath all the gold dust and designer shoes, I’m just… me.

And sometimes I wonder if that will ever be enough.

You once told me I was insufferable.

(You were drunk. I pretended not to care. I went back to my room and cried into a velvet pillow that cost more than your entire wardrobe, there was snot all over it, it wasn’t my best moment, and I blame you, truly. (No I do not))

But I think I believed you.

I think some part of me always has.

There’s a part of me that wants to knock on your door tonight and ask — do you think of me when I’m not in the room? Do you see me when I’m not being useful? Would you have come looking for me if I hadn’t shown up at this house first?

(You didn’t ask why I was here. You never asked. I don’t know if that was kindness or cowardice.)

I’ve been so careful with myself for so long. So tightly wound. And now I’m in this strange, quiet place with you, and the threads are starting to come loose, one by one. You don’t even notice, do you?

Today, after I got back, I made tea and just sat by the window for hours. You were out chopping firewood like it was a fight you were trying to win. You didn’t see me watching.

Your hands shook when you wiped your forehead. Just for a second. Just enough.

I wanted to go to you.

I didn’t.

I don't know what scares me more — the idea of you turning me away, or the idea that you wouldn't.

Would it be a mistake to touch your hand? Would you flinch? Would I?

Would you tell me I’m being ridiculous?

Would you kiss me back?

(I didn’t mean to write that.)

(But I’m not crossing it out.)

I don’t know where we go from here. I don’t even know what this is. A temporary exile? A second chance? A punishment wrapped in soft wool blankets and bitter coffee?

All I know is that I saw Katniss and Peeta today, and they looked like the world was still something worth living in.

And tonight, sitting across from you at the table while you picked leaves out of your hair and mumbled about firewood, I felt something in my chest shift.

Maybe I’m not ready to hope. But I’m tempted to.

Effie

Letter Four
Wednesday, I Think. But Don’t Quote Me.

Haymitch,

You’re going to laugh when you read this.

(You won’t — because you won’t ever read this — but I need to pretend I’m talking to someone, and unfortunately you’re the only person within a ten-mile radius I even remotely trust with my feelings. Tragic, really.)

I had lunch with Katniss and Peeta today.

Yes. Lunch.

Actual food. At an actual table. With real chairs and warm bread and even laughter. I barely recognize myself.

It happened by accident, like most things lately. I was in town again — mostly for soap, though I got distracted and spent an absurd amount of time debating between two tins of tea I didn’t need — and Peeta spotted me.

He called my name. Kindly. Like I wasn’t a ghost. Like I was a person worth knowing.

(Do you remember how quiet he used to be? Now he looks people in the eye. It’s like he’s building a world from scratch and letting people step into it one at a time.)

He asked if I had plans. I laughed — a real laugh, one that startled even me — and said, “I live in a house with Haymitch Abernathy. Do you think I have plans?”

He smiled. That soft, golden smile that makes you forget the world ever fell apart.

Katniss was already inside the bakery. She emerged a few minutes later with flour on her nose and a tray of something that smelled like heaven. Cheese buns, I think? I wasn’t paying attention — I was too busy pretending not to be moved.

They invited me in. No expectations. No performances. Just… a seat at their table.

I almost said no.

But I didn’t.

We ate. We talked. Mostly about silly things. The best ways to stretch rations. How Katniss burns everything except bread and cheese buns. That time Katniss got stuck in a fence post because she was chasing a raccoon she thought was stealing laundry. The time Peeta tried to bake a new recipe and it ended up funny.

At one point, Katniss looked at me and said, “You’re different.”

I froze.

But then she added, “You seem… different. In a good way.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

I told her the truth — that I don’t really know who I’m supposed to be anymore. That the war cracked me open and I haven’t quite found all the pieces yet.

She nodded like she understood.

Maybe she did.

And Peeta said something then — something small, but it stayed with me. He said, “Sometimes when things break, they come back better. Not the same. But stronger where they were weak.”

I think I stared at him like he was an oracle.

Haymitch, they’re so young. And they’ve seen more pain than most people three times their age. But there’s something… alive in them. Some flickering thing that refuses to go out.

And sitting there, in that sun-dappled kitchen with its chipped mugs and crooked shelves, I wanted to belong to something. To someone. To anything.

I’m so tired of being alone.

Even when I’m not technically alone.

Even when I’m across the room from you, pretending to read while you mutter curses at a knot in the kindling.

Sometimes I think I’d give up every luxury I ever owned just to sit next to you and know you wanted me there.

Do you?

Would you?

God, I wish I were brave enough to ask.

I stayed for nearly two hours. Katniss insisted I take some bread home. I carried it in my hands like it was gold. I almost cried when I got outside.

Isn’t that ridiculous?

Effie Trinket, the woman who used to dine on goose eggs and candied violets, now crying over warm bread in a linen napkin.

Maybe I’m broken.

Maybe I’m healing.

Maybe it’s both.

I thought about telling you where I’d been when I got home. I stood outside your door with the bread tucked under my arm and my hand halfway to knocking.

But I didn’t.

Because what if you didn’t care?

What if you just grunted and said something dismissive and I was left standing there like a fool with crumbs and feelings I can’t quite explain?

What if you do care, and I can’t bear the softness of that?

Because if you looked at me with anything close to tenderness, I think I might fall apart completely.

And I’m not sure I’d know how to put myself back together again.

So instead, I made tea.

I left the bread on the counter for you.

I sat by the window and wrote this instead.

Sometimes I think I’m writing these letters just to keep myself from saying any of it out loud. Because if I do, there’s no taking it back. No turning away. No pretending I don’t feel things I’m not supposed to feel for a man who drinks too much and forgets to close cabinet doors.

I miss the girl I was before the war.

But I don’t want to be her again.

She didn’t know how to be real.

I think I’m learning now.

And I think, maybe, I want you to see me — not just the pieces you can tolerate — but all of me.

Even the parts I’ve never shown anyone before.

Even this.

Effie

Letter Five
Tuesday Night. 

Haymitch,

You won’t want to read this.

I’m not even sure I do. But it’s been so quiet here tonight. So still. And the only sound has been your breath across the hall, steady and harsh. It’s almost like we’re both afraid to move.

I suppose that’s the truth of it, isn’t it?

We’re both afraid. Of the quiet. Of the noise. Of each other.

But most of all, I’m afraid of what will happen if I stop pretending.

Stop pretending I don’t feel like I’m crawling out of my skin every damn minute of every damn day.

You don’t ask me much about my time in the Capitol. It’s as if you know it’s there, buried somewhere too deep to dig up. You know it’s too ugly. Too bloody.

But I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep carrying it around like something I can’t even name. Not when you’re in the next room, alive. And I’m here. Breathing.

Do you know what it’s like, Haymitch? To feel your skin burn and ache as though it’s never quite healed? That kind of feeling that makes you want to tear everything off and run, but you can’t because you’re still bound by things you can’t even explain? Because I sure didn’t.

I remember when they finally released me, after they were done with me. After the Capitol decided I wasn’t useful anymore. The first time I stepped outside, the sun felt like an enemy. Like I was never meant to see it again. Like I was a prisoner — not in a cell, but in my own flesh.

The soldiers brought me back to District 12, all those months ago. I couldn’t remember much of anything at first. I could barely stand. I was shaking too badly to even put on my shoes. But then I heard the whispers — the pity, the judgment. They’d all heard what happened. Everyone knew.

How could they not? The Capitol made sure I was their spectacle. But they also made sure it was something they could erase, like the whole thing never happened. No one asked how I was holding up. No one cared. They just looked at me like I was a broken doll they didn’t know how to fix.

I think that’s when I stopped thinking I could be fixed.

But what’s worse than all of that, Haymitch, is the one thing I’ve never told anyone.

What’s worse is that sometimes… sometimes I think I deserved it. The pain. The bruises. The cuts. The way I’d scream, and it felt like I was screaming for no one at all.

Sometimes I think I deserved it because I was always so damn good. I prided myself on being that shiny, perfect little object that could fool everyone into believing I was fine. But I wasn’t. I’ve never been fine. I was just a puppet, one that didn’t know how to stop dancing.

I don’t think I knew how to stop pretending even after they tore me apart.

They wanted me to break. They wanted to destroy the smile, to make me forget that I ever cared about anything. I think, for a while, they did. But something inside me refused to give in to that. Something still held on.

I kept imagining the people I had left behind. The faces of the others. And you. Yes, you. Even when I couldn’t stand the sound of my own name, I imagined you telling me to get back on my feet.

(You were the only one who ever told me that.)

I thought about how we both used to look at the Capitol in different ways, I, blinded, you angry. All that glitz. All that nonsense. All that cruelty. I thought, this is my punishment, but deep down, I kept hearing you say — "You’re stronger than they think, Effie Trinket."

Even after everything that happened, I still believed that.

But I don’t know what to do with myself now.

Do you understand? Do you?

There are days when I wake up and feel like I’ve come back from the dead. But I’m still haunted by it. By the image of my own reflection, broken. I don’t recognize myself in the mirror sometimes. There are days when I don’t want to look at myself at all.

And then I’ll catch myself in the window at night. And I’ll see you — across the room, with that terrible frown, that stubborn set to your jaw. And I want to tell you all of this. I want to confess everything. But instead, I stay quiet. I stay still.

Sometimes, I think you notice. But you don’t ask. I think you know what would happen if you did.

I think it’s easier this way, isn’t it? For me to bury it all away where you can’t see it.

But the worst part, Haymitch, is that I don’t want you to see it. I don’t want you to see the rawness inside me. The things I can’t change. I can’t have you pity me. I couldn’t bear it.

So I keep it hidden. I keep it buried, locked behind the ridiculous shell I’ve built. But there are nights — like tonight — when I want to scream. When I want you to just know. When I want to feel something other than this constant ache in my chest.

You don’t have to say anything when you read this. You don’t have to act any differently. I don’t need you to fix me.

But maybe, if you can — just for one moment — stop looking at me like I’m the woman who still wears heels and fancy coats, maybe you’ll see the one who is still broken. Still trying to put the pieces back together.

I’m still here, Haymitch. And so are you.

Maybe we’re more alike than either of us wants to admit.

Effie

Letter Six
I don’t really remember what day is it.

Haymitch,

Today was quiet. The good kind of quiet. The kind I didn’t know still existed in this world.

I don’t know if you noticed, but for the first time in a long while… I wasn’t holding my breath. Not when we sat in the sun outside with Katniss and Peeta, not when I laughed at that stupid joke you made about Peeta’s bread baking obsession, not even when Katniss handed me that flower she picked like it was nothing — but it was everything. That small moment. That softness.

We all sat there for hours, remember? Just… being. No one was trying to fix anything. No one was breaking. No one was pretending not to be haunted.

And yet… we were all still haunted. But together. Less ghosts, more people. Somehow.

Katniss looked healthier. Not in the physical sense — though she’s eating again, thank God — but in the way her eyes didn’t dart to exits, or shadows. On the way she leaned into Peeta without flinching. She’s still Katniss — sharp, watchful, and terribly young in a way that makes me ache — but she’s softening. And I think Peeta is her reason. Or maybe he’s just her mirror. The gentle kind.

I envy them. Not in a bitter way. Just… I see them and I think, how did they survive each other? How did they hold onto something so fragile through so much fire? And then I think — maybe that’s what love is. Not the easy thing. The hard thing. The thing you choose to protect even when it’s scorched and trembling.

And I-

I don’t know why I’m writing this. Or maybe I do.

Because the whole day, I kept catching myself looking at you.

You were drinking lemonade like it offended you. You said something about it being an insult to decent alcohol, but you drank it anyway. I watched the sun catch the lines on your face and thought, I know this man better than I know myself, and I still don’t know where he goes when he gets quiet.

I wanted to ask you. I wanted to reach across the space between us — so small, but so endless — and just say it: I’m here. I’ll go wherever you go.

But I didn’t.

Because I’m afraid.

I’m afraid of saying it out loud, of you hearing it and realizing how messy I am, how cracked down the middle I’ve become. I’m afraid that once it’s spoken, it can’t be unsaid, and if you don’t feel the same—well. Then I’ll have broken the only thing in this whole godforsaken world that makes me feel safe.

You.

It’s always been you.

You with your impossible moods and your sarcasm and your careful silences. You with your damn grumpy sighs and the way you somehow always know when I’m lying — not just to you, but to myself.

And it’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. Because we fought like hell just days ago. Because we’re not good at this. Because we’re both so goddamn ruined and stubborn. But I keep thinking of the way you reached out to me when Katniss made tea, and our hands brushed, and you didn’t pull away.

You looked at me. Really looked. Like I was more than what they made me into.

Do you know what that’s like?

Do you have any idea what that feels like, after everything they did?

Because I still wake up some nights with the phantom sensation of their hands on me. I still flinch when I hear footsteps behind me. I still remember the lights. The masks. The sterile smell of pain. They tried to erase me, Haymitch. They didn’t want to kill me — they wanted to undo me.

But you… you’re the only one who makes me feel like I’m still Effie. Not the Capitol’s puppet. Not the woman who wore masks made of silk and smiles. Just me. Raw. Quiet. Trying.

So here it is — this is my last letter. I don’t know if you’ve read them. I think you have. (You’re not very stealthy, darling.) But whether you read them or not… this is me, writing it down for myself.

I love you.

There. I said it.

I love you, Haymitch Abernathy, with all your broken edges and gruff nonsense. I love you in the soft moments and the sharp ones. I love you in the way I hold my breath when you’re near, and in the way I breathe easier once you’re close. I love you in the silences and in the arguments, and in the way you try — even when you pretend you’re not.

I don’t need you to say it back. I don’t even need you to feel it. I just need you to know.

And maybe that’s enough for now.

Today was a good day. The sky didn’t fall. The world didn’t end. We laughed. We remembered how to be human.

And if that’s not a beginning, then I don’t know what is.

Yours, even if you never ask me to be,
Effie

****

He wasn’t supposed to read them.

Haymitch isn’t the kind of man who stumbles onto things accidentally — not anymore. He notices things. He pretends not to, for the sake of his dignity or what’s left of it, but he sees more than people think.

He saw the way Effie clutched that stack of folded papers like they were lifelines. He saw the way her eyes flicked toward them each night after dinner, her fingers twitching like she needed to write something or maybe needed not to .

He knew.

But he hadn’t expected to find them left out. Not unguarded. Not waiting. Not… open.

The letters were in her dresser drawer. Unsealed. Slid between layers of silk that hadn’t seen the light of day in months. She hadn’t hidden them well. Not from him. Not from someone who’s spent a lifetime finding things best left untouched.

He could’ve walked away.

He should have.

Instead, Haymitch sat down on the edge of her bed, the room still faintly perfumed like lavender and parchment, and read the first letter.

Then the second.

By the third, he stopped breathing.

She called him darling .

That should’ve made him scoff. Curse. Roll his eyes. It didn’t.

It just made something inside him crack.

Each letter peeled him back, like bark from an old tree, revealing the raw, beating thing beneath. She wrote like someone who didn’t expect anyone to read her. She wrote like every word cost her something.

He knows what that’s like. Hell, it’s the reason he doesn’t talk much — because speaking costs him too.

There’s a letter where she talks about Peeta and Katniss. About the way they survived together. About how love isn’t easy, it’s just true. That one nearly killed him.

And the one where she confesses that the torture never really ended. That she still feels their hands. That she still hears them.

Haymitch had to put that one down. Had to pour himself a drink. He didn’t take it. Just stared at it until the need passed.

He remembers the Capitol. Remember what they did to her. And he remembers being unable to stop it.

And then the last one.

The one that breaks him.

She says she loves him. Just like that. Tucked inside a letter she never meant for him to see, like a secret meant to die quietly.

"I love you, Haymitch Abernathy, with all your broken edges and gruff nonsense. I love you in the soft moments and the sharp ones."

He reads it twice. Three times. He reads it until the words imprint on his ribs and become part of him.

And then he laughs.

Not because it’s funny.

Because of course. Of course it’s her. Of course, it’s been her.

The one who saw past his bitterness and biting tongue. The one who yelled at him when no one else would, who held her ground and kept her dignity, even when they dragged her through hell. The one who still wore sparkles in the ashes.

He thinks about the way she looked yesterday, her eyes alight with something close to peace as Katniss handed her a flower. He thinks about the tremble in her fingers when their hands brushed and she didn’t pull away.

He thinks about how he didn’t either.

He has spent his whole life running from softness. And she — she’s softness wrapped in steel. She never needed saving. She just needed someone to stay.

And God help him, he wants to stay.

He closes the last letter and sits with it in his hands like a fragile thing.

Effie is in the garden now, her silhouette lit by the last stretch of sunlight, her hair catching gold like it always used to in the Capitol — except now, it’s real. There’s dirt on her hands. She’s singing, something he can’t hear.

He knows he can’t unread these words.

Knows he can’t pretend anymore.

But maybe… maybe he doesn’t want to.

He puts the letters back in her drawer. Carefully. Reverently.

Then he opens the window and breathes in the dusk. He’ll wait until she comes back inside. He’ll pour her tea — the kind she actually likes — and he’ll say something stupid to make her roll her eyes. And then, when the moment is right, he’ll tell her.

Not everything.

Just enough.

Maybe something like—

“You write too damn much.”

And when she looks at him like she always does, sharp and vulnerable all at once, he’ll reach across that endless space and finally close it.

Because the sky didn’t fall today.

And for once, Haymitch Abernathy isn’t afraid.

****

Effie doesn’t notice anything strange when she walks into the house.

The sun is barely dipping past the treetops, casting golden slants through the kitchen windows. Her hands are streaked with dirt and she’s singing something he can’t place. One of those tunes that stuck in her head like perfume.

She’s halfway through rinsing her fingers at the kitchen sink when she senses him behind her.

Not looming. Not waiting. Just there.

“Haymitch,” she says without turning around, her voice light. “If you’ve come to grumble about the rosemary again-”

“You write too damn much.”

She freezes. Her heart stutters.

The water keeps running.

Slowly, as if moving too fast might shatter something delicate, Effie shuts off the tap and dries her hands on the towel. She turns.

He’s standing at the edge of the table, where they ate breakfast together that morning. His arms are folded. His hair is a mess. He looks like he hasn’t slept, or maybe like he has for the first time in days and didn’t like it.

“I-” she starts, then stops. “You read them.”

“I did.”

Her mouth opens, then closes again.

She doesn’t ask why . Doesn’t ask how . She just looks at him, lips parted, eyes wide, all that polished poise falling away like dust.

“I didn’t mean for you to,” she says eventually, her voice smaller now. Quieter. “They weren’t… they weren’t for you.”

“They were about me.”

He says it without cruelty. Just a fact. Just true.

She swallows. “Yes.”

Haymitch exhales slowly and walks to the kettle. He pours water into the teapot she favors — the chipped white one with blue flowers — and opens the tin of her favorite blend without needing to check.

She watches in stunned silence as he moves like this is normal. Like he does this every day. Maybe he would, if she let him.

When he finally looks up, there’s something soft around his eyes. Something raw. “I shouldn’t have read them. I know that.”

“Then why did you?”

“Because I’m a selfish bastard.”

She flinches. He sees it.

He sets the teapot down carefully and steps closer, slower now. “I read them because I’ve been trying not to say everything in them for months. Years, maybe. Because I’m tired of pretending I don’t feel things.”

Effie blinks hard, her lashes wet. “You never… you never said you felt anything.”

“I don’t say a lot of things. Doesn’t mean I don’t feel them.”

The silence stretches.

He takes another step. They’re close now. Close enough to feel the tension humming like electricity. Close enough that her breath shakes.

“You meant every word?” he asks, quiet.

She nods, just once.

“I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to make you carry me too,” she whispers. “You’ve carried enough.”

His hand comes up like he might touch her, then drops. “You think I didn’t want to?”

Her voice wobbles. “You’ve been through hell. I didn’t want to be another weight.”

“You weren’t,” he says, firm now. “You were the only damn thing that reminded me I was still alive.”

She’s crying now, and she hates it. Hates the way her hands tremble when she tries to wipe her face. But Haymitch just steps closer and takes the teacup from her fingers and sets it aside. Gently. Like it’s precious.

Like she’s precious.

“I’m not good at this,” he says. “But I need you to know… those letters — they weren’t pathetic. Or foolish. They were the bravest thing I’ve ever seen you do.”

“Even braver than wearing neon feathers in the Victor’s Village?”

He huffs a laugh. “Alright, second bravest.”

She smiles through her tears. “I meant it. Every word.”

“I know.”

His voice is quiet again, thick around the edges.

“I read the one about the garden,” he says. “And the one where you said I don’t let anyone in.”

Her eyes flicker.

“You were right,” he adds. “I don’t. But I-I want to. With you.”

She’s not used to hearing his voice like this — low, unsure. Hopeful.

It undoes her.

“Why now?” she asks. “Why not before?”

“Because I thought if I let myself want anything again, it’d all fall apart. That I’d lose it. Lose you. But I think I’m more afraid of never trying.”

She steps into his space. Slowly. Deliberately.

“You’re not going to lose me.”

He searches her face like he’s waiting for the catch. When he doesn’t find it, he reaches for her hand — the one that always holds her teacup with pinky raised — and threads his fingers through hers.

“I’m still a mess,” he says.

“So am I.”

“I’ll probably say something stupid tomorrow.”

“You say something stupid every day.”

His laugh this time is real. Deep. Warm.

She reaches up and brushes a strand of hair from his forehead. Her fingers linger.

“Do you still want me?” she asks softly.

And he says, without hesitation, “Yes. God, yes. ”

There’s no kiss. Not yet. But he leans his forehead against hers, eyes shut, like he’s holding on with everything he has.

She doesn’t pull away.