Chapter Text
I'm never quite going to remind him of her . My skin is too pale, my hair too light. My accent is too gaudy, my singing voice shrill. A goose to a dove.
For so long he stared through me. Five years in– sure, it was traumatic to experience. But ten years in? Each year Effie stepped off the train with her heels clicking like a carriage off the track and there Haymitch stood, mind in a world of his own until she snapped her fingers and he focused in on her.
“Hey princess, back again?”
It was the 65th games when she saw something in him spark, and it was while watching that year's victor, Finnick Odair. Fourteen years old, but looking unsettlingly older; that cockiness and self assuredness certainly reminded him of his past self, she thought. But it wasn't until she saw Haymitch's usually stoic face crack at the mention of Finnick's girlfriend that an old memory was injected back into Effie's brain. An image of a crying boy, shown on all of the televisions of Panem as he mourned.
“Haymitch?” Effie marched into his house later that week, the last time they would meet this year as the victory tour was beginning. And well, they weren't needed.
A loud groan and the sound of a thud alerted the blonde to which room her mentor was in. As she tittered into the kitchen, a scruffy man looked up from his long unkempt hair, red mark on his forehead– No questioning where the thump came from, then.
The smell of alcohol made her nose wrinkle, yet she took a deep breath when she had decided he wasn't going to answer.
“This is the earliest you've started back at it in years.”
“Hah.” Haymitch hiccuped, a cheeky smile on his face, “ Starting back at it usually means that I would have had to stop to begin with.”
Okay, Effie couldn't argue with that… But she didn't want to brush it under the rug, Haymitch seemed more affected than usual.
“Look, I know it's not my place Haymitch–”
“Sure isn't Princess.”
“– But Finnick Odair's interviews seem to have shaken you up. Why is that?”
Effie had never before seen Haymitch's drunken hobbling as an ‘act’ before, but she could have been fooled with the way he straightened every bone and muscle in his body, especially his mouth. Taut, his lips pressed together harshly.
His eyes looked scary. If she didn't know him better, she would think he was going to charge at her, hit her like a savage.
“No reason.” His teeth squeaked as they ground together with the effort of speaking.
“What, dear? I've known you for long enough that I can tell when something is really bothering y–”
“You know nothing about me, Euphemia Trinket.”
Haymitch spat, slamming his hands down on the table as he arched his back like a cat, fur bristling as he walked into his bedroom.
The slamming door made Effie jump, her wig bouncing. She hurried out.