Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

BOOK I: 

Canta, O Musa, de illo rebelli tonanti,

De illo amante vini, de illo impudente acerbo,

Qui inclementem Nivem contemnere ausus,

Tam ex iustitia quam ex oculis caeruleis

Paribus ipso quod reliquit caelo.

Sing, O Muse, of that thunderous renegade,

That lover of wine, that cynical wit,

Who dared to defy unforgiving Snow,

As much because of justice as eyes

The azure of the very skies he abandoned.

 PART I

Mud squishes beneath Haymitch’s sandaled feet. Impassively, he surveys the destruction he has wrought. Spears and swords and shields lie scattered, slowly sinking into the wet soil, dropped by their owners as they fled or were swept away. Did they really think their flimsy bronze weapons stood a chance against him? No one has ever gotten anywhere by stabbing floodwaters.

And he barely lifted a finger. His foes, seeing he was alone, had jeered at him, thinking him easy pickings. Haymitch simply raised his eyebrow and glanced at the sky. That was all he’d needed for the heavens to unleash a deluge amid thunder and lightning upon the overconfident fools.

“Well done, Haymitch.”

He suppresses his grimace before turning to face his supposed general—in truth, merely one of his fellow Sky Gods who’d had the foresight and ambition to claim command over the rest of them. “I thought you said this would be a challenge.”

“It seems I underestimated you.”

Haymitch doesn’t like that calculating look in Snow’s eyes, almost as frozen as his heart. “If that’s all you need, I’ll be going now.” There’s a village nearby that produces the best wine Haymitch has ever tasted during his many centuries of immortal life. It’s about time for him to restock.

Snow, as if deigning to touch a lesser creature, places his hand on Haymitch’s shoulder. Haymitch tries not to shudder at his cold touch. The snowflakes for which Snow was nicknamed—no one’s entirely sure what his name at birth was, that’s how old Snow is—and which always follow him around swirl innocuously, belying their ability to multiply in seconds and turn into a raging blizzard. “You are a good ally, Haymitch. With your continued loyalty and diligence, we shall soon end this rebellion.”

Rebellion. Haymitch’s eyes narrow ever so slightly. “Rebellion” implies that the peoples they’re fighting against were previously under Snow and the Sky Gods’ dominion. But none of the others, the Earth Gods and the Sea Gods and all the rest, have ever been under their thumb. In all honesty, it was Snow who decided that the other deities were getting uppity and needed to be put in their place.

But far be it from Haymitch to point that out. He saw at the beginning of the war, same as everyone else, what happened to the few Sky Gods who dared to oppose Snow’s plans for domination over all the deities. And Haymitch quite likes his current position in life. If he needs to occasionally redirect a few thunderstorms in order to spend the rest of his time happily brooding alone with his wine, then so be it.

Snow goes to find some other schmuck to harass, and Haymitch wastes no time before he skedaddles. Somewhere, there’s an amphora of wine with his name on it. To make haste, he wraps himself in clouds and speeds off to the village. Once he gets there, though, he stares down in horror at it from where he hovers in the sky. “Shit,” he mutters.

The village...is no longer a village. Only a few houses remain, and all of them battered and uninhabitable. The once luxurious fields of grapes are underwater, the harvest completely lost. Corpses of the unfortunate float by. The surviving villagers huddle on a nearby hill, clutching their pitifully few belongings, children and adults alike weeping.

Haymitch knows exactly whose fault this is. There is no other Sky God in the universe who can wreak as much rain damage as he can.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Haymitch made sure, he made sure, that the rain would only flood the battlefield. The water was never supposed to reach the village, and if it did, it would have been no worse than any normal storm. As Haymitch descends and continues to survey the scene with increasing dismay, a lingering chill in the air seeps into his bones.

Snow.

Rain and snow are not so different from each other. Just as Haymitch can’t pull blizzards out of nowhere, neither can Snow so easily produce thunderstorms. But it wouldn’t be hard for a god as old as Snow to latch onto the rain, once it had already fallen, and send it whichever way he wanted.

“Why would Snow do this?” Haymitch wonders aloud.

Next thing he knows, he’s barely dodging a flying projectile in time—is that a dart? Bewildered and more than a little irritated, he whirls around to find the perpetrator.

“The fuck?” he growls, spying the figure poised with a blowgun. Stormclouds amass overhead as thunder rumbles in the distance.

His attacker doesn’t flee in the face of the imminent tempest, though. Instead, he—no, she straightens, chin lifted in defiance and wheat-colored hair catching the sunlight. “Next time I won’t miss.”

“A dart. How terrifying,” Haymitch says dryly. Gods are quite a hardy breed. She should know. He can tell for sure that she’s a fellow immortal, but he can’t pinpoint exactly which type of deity. Certainly not a Sky God, he knows most of them.

“It should be,” she shoots back. “These are dipped in nightlock juice.”

Oh. That is terrifying, actually. Killing a god is an immensely difficult feat—although Haymitch is uncomfortably aware that he’s succeeded a few times during the war so far. Still, there are several ways to do it, and one is via nightlock. The berries, in small quantities, will make any god ill for days on end. Too much, though, and you’re a goner. If this girl truly has good aim, well, a dart to his heart could get the nightlock into his system very quickly, before he could do anything to save himself.

“Well, sweetheart, it sounds like you have quite the grievance against me,” Haymitch responds, with more casualness than he feels. “Have at it, then. Tell me what I did this time to piss someone off.”

Her blue eyes (the same blue as the sky, how is she not a Sky God?) flash angrily up at him. “You asked yourself why Snow would do this.” She gestures at the destruction before them. “You really ought to ask yourself first why you would do this.”

His hackles rise. “I was told to handle the enemy soldiers, and that’s exactly what I did. If Snow went behind my back to wreak havoc on civilians, that’s no fault of mine.”

“Ha! You expect me to believe that? This is far from the first time that the infamous Haymitch has laid waste to hapless villages, where the so-called ‘rebels’ are suspected of hiding.”

“Infamous? You flatter me,” Haymitch retorts, as his mind frantically processes what she’s just disclosed. This is the first time he’s aware that he’s laid waste to hapless anything. How long has Snow been doing this, taking advantage of his storms and manipulating them?

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t kill you right now,” she says, quite seriously.

Haymitch stares at her, taking in all the details of her face (a very lovely face) and clothing and general demeanor. She’s certainly one of the younger gods, perhaps younger than himself. He finally notices the way her bare feet seem to hug the ground, as if gathering strength from the soil beneath her. An Earth God, then. And if his instinct is correct—as it usually is—then she’s one of Snow’s pesky “rebels.”

A rebel who has apparently heard of him and doesn’t like what she’s heard.

Slowly, he lowers himself to the ground, so that he’s closer to her. She tightens her grip on her blowgun but otherwise doesn’t display any alarm. “Do you want the logical reason or the emotional reason?” Haymitch queries.

She looks at him suspiciously. “Both, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Logically, you shouldn’t kill me because if I mysteriously disappear, Snow is bound to notice and send others to search for me. He has plenty of supporters, enough that you won’t be able to hide from them for long, once they figure out what happened to me. And when they find you, Snow won’t be very kind to you,” Haymitch says matter-of-factly. “Emotionally...well, I don’t know if it makes any difference to you, but never in this war have I intended to harm innocents. I wasn’t even aware that I indirectly caused harm until just now. And now that I know I’ve caused more destruction than I realized, I am very sorry for it. I would have acted differently if I had known what Snow would do.”

“You would have disobeyed Snow?” she asks disbelievingly.

“I’m not dumb. Give me some credit. I like not being tortured, so I would still have listened to him. But I would’ve come up with a way to make sure he couldn’t take advantage of my powers so heinously.”

She looks less inclined to murder him now, but he’s not about to let his guard down. “But you would still have hurt all those soldiers and let Snow capture them.”

“They’re soldiers. This is war. They know what they’re getting themselves into,” Haymitch states.

“That’s true,” she allows. “But does it not bother you that we fight because your people struck first? You want to conquer us. We’re fighting for our very existence. How can you justify that?”

He can’t. Haymitch has known all along that he can’t. But he’s managed to ignore that fact all this time, for peace of mind. And now this girl is forcing himself to confront it. Dammit. He should just sweep her away with a good wave of floodwater and let that be the end of it. “In this war, I’m just a soldier. I follow my orders.”

“That’s a pitiful excuse and you know it,” she says quietly.

Discomfort seeps into his being. “So it is. But I won’t have to use it for much longer. You know as well as I do that Snow’s all but won this war.”

“Yes,” she concedes softly. “He has.”

“Your side would be wise to surrender. He’ll be less harsh now than he will be later.”

She smiles humorlessly. “The War Gods certainly thought that, didn’t they? Sided with Snow before he even needed to make a threat. Things would have played out so differently if they’d held out and stood by us.”

“Undoubtedly,” Haymitch agrees. “But we can’t change the past.”

She shakes her head. “If only.” Sighing, she starts to turn around. “Well, this encounter turned out a lot differently than how I was expecting it to go. Goodbye, Haymitch. We probably won’t ever meet again.”

As she says that, something cold grips his chest. Everything this Earth Goddess has said and tried to do to him today screamed hostility, and yet the idea of never seeing her again chills him to the core. For Fate’s sake, he doesn’t even know her name.

He rectifies that soon enough. “You know who I am, but you don’t seem to possess the same amount of infamy as me. Might I know with whom I have the honor of conversing?”

She looks back at him, and those cerulean eyes burn themselves indelibly into his mind. “Maysilee,” she tells him simply, and then she dashes into the forest, which readily swallows up and hides and protects Earth Goddess, one of their own.

Maysilee. The name echoes in his ears, and unbeknownst to him, his heart steadily learns to beat in time with those three syllables.

Chapter Text

PART II

It's almost sickening, the amount of food and drink and nectar and ambrosia spread upon the banquet tables. Let it not be said that Snow does not reward his allies duly. As Haymitch samples a particularly fine vintage of wine, he allows himself a smidgen of triumph at being one of those allies, even as he does his best to ignore his guilt.

War never ends without casualties, even among the supposedly immortal gods. And Haymitch, as one of the most powerful Sky Gods, had more than a hand in them.

As Snow stands to give a speech, everyone else faces him and listens with utmost attention. Haymitch listens too, knowing that his rank is such that he could get away with visibly not paying attention, but Snow wouldn't be happy about it. Although he doesn't particularly care about Snow's happiness as an endgame, he does care about his own well-being. And so he endures.

Then Snow says something that alarms Haymitch.

"The Earth Gods were the leaders of the rebellion that we just suppressed. They were responsible for most of the casualties on our side. And so they, and all their fellow rebels, must be punished. Bring forth the prisoner."

Haymitch's heart almost stops as two guards drag a third in chains between them. He thinks, with some dread, that he might recognize that head of wheat-colored waves. Then she lifts her head, and he realizes that he most certainly knows those fiery cerulean eyes.

"This," Snow says disdainfully, "is one of the daughters of the Earth Gods' ringleader. He has been taken care of, but that is not enough. We must demonstrate to those who rebelled that we will not suffer such disobedience again." And then Snow details an awful, so-called game that will strike terror into the hearts of all those who see and hear of it.

Maysilee is to be the first player, in this game with no winners.

She's hauled out of the banquet hall. She refuses to be humiliated, managing to stay on her feet and keeping her chin high. Just before the doors slam behind her, she makes eye contact with Haymitch. Her blue eyes soften ever so slightly before hardening again.

He is silent and without an appetite for the rest of the evening.

That night, as everyone else in Snow's palace sleeps off their gluttony and indulgence, Haymitch creeps down the stairs to the new King of the Gods' prison cells. The dungeon is freezing—as expected in the abode of one whose name is Snow. There are no guards on duty, and he realizes why when he finds her cell and looks inside.

Maysilee is shivering, arms wrapped around herself. Chains forged of adamant, the hardest substance in the cosmos, one that even gods cannot break, shackle her wrists and ankles. The cell door could be wide open and she still wouldn't be able to leave.

Haymitch thinks only for a second before unclasping his cloak and pushing it through the bars.

She looks up at him slowly. The suspicion in her eyes fades, but not entirely. "What are you doing here?" she queries, making no move to take the cloak.

He offers her a rare, wholly honest answer. "I don't know."

"Hm." She eyes the cloak for a moment before reaching out. The chains are just long enough for her to snag it and drag it toward her, so she can wrap it around herself. "Thank you."

"How did Snow capture you?" Haymitch asks, cutting to the chase.

"I set myself up as a diversion so the rest of my people could get away," Maysilee says flatly. "I would do it again if I had to."

Haymitch doesn't doubt her. "I'm sorry about your father." Gods' deaths are never pretty. His was especially gruesome. But he doesn't see the need to tell her that.

"For some reason, I believe you." She closes her eyes and curls into the cloak. "How long do you suppose I have before Snow finishes that arena he was yapping about?"

"A few weeks, at most. Snow wants a show as soon as possible."

She chuckles darkly. "Oh, I'll give him one. And I'll make him regret it, as best I can until I die."

Talk of her death sends chills down Haymitch's spine. Why? He doesn't even know this girl. They were enemies during the war. He should be looking forward to her dying. And yet… "You'll need to keep up your strength, then." And he passes her the small bundle he brought with him. As he was packing it earlier, he wondered why he was doing this. He still doesn't know.

Without much hesitation, Maysilee opens it. Within are a few pieces of ambrosia and about a thimble's worth of nectar, the food and drink of the gods. A deity could live on them alone, rely on them alone for energy. "They won't be happy with you if they find out."

"They won't find out," Haymitch dismisses. "Only you and I know about this, and somehow, I don't think you're going to tell."

Maysilee manages a smirk. She raises the nectar in a pseudo-toast and downs it. Instantly, her divine glow returns to her, and she looks almost the picture of health. As she chews on the ambrosia, her cheeks become rosier. Haymitch is distracted by the rush of blood pooling beneath her skin. He wonders how warm her face would be if he touched that blush.

When she finishes, she asks him, "Did you come here just to bring me this? Not that I'm complaining, but it seems rather purposeless."

"Like I said, I don't know why I'm here." Haymitch sits on the floor, leaning against the bars. "Tell me… Tell me about your home."

Maysilee sighs. "Are you trying to hurt me?" she replies without vitriol.

"If it's a bad topic—"

"No, no. It'll… It'll give me something comforting to think about." She clears her throat and begins. "It's...heavenly. It's the most beautiful place in the world. Tall grasses swaying in the breeze, trees heavy with sweet fruit, golden wheat fields that ripple with the wind. The scent of honeysuckle is always in the air, and wildflowers grow in explosions of color…"

He sits there in that cold dungeon until it's almost dawn.