Work Text:
Of course Effie's grandparents had connections with the rebels, Haymitch thought. That explains how such a Capitol sweetheart hardly gets a job and then ends up with 12. All the dissidents get thrown to the nobody districts. Courtesy of the Capitol.
He watched her wave about the maddening crowd, orange hair in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. "It's back in fashion", he'd loosely heard her tell her sister.
"And it's not orange, Haymitch, it's coral." With a side nod she'd said that, too.
"No difference. You still look like an old traffic cone." Stiff and everywhere and signaling danger, he thought to himself. The shock in her face through twenty layers of masked control was already a bit too much and Haymitch could admit he suddenly felt like fucking shit.
Bright and everywhere and so much he was trying to avoid.
In his golden cage, acid and chilling cold, he felt like his head was about to explode. He wasn't allowed to drink here, but everyone in this party was so out of their brains already that even the guards supposed to keep a steady eye on him were wandering off and drinking blind. So some people had slipped him drinks through the bars and at first he'd wondered if it would be worse to go through this drunk or sober. That if he was drunk maybe he couldn't punch one of these fascists or stop the chilling, invading advances of creepy older women. But then he decided that he didn't care.
He was 21 now, and it had been happening for 5 years. The lusting after him, the pictures, the private parties, the exclusive soirées, the fucking endless, dragging events he was forced to attend. Where he would be paraded around like some kind of sick Capitol trophy while people drank, ate and drugged double their weight for hours only to vomit it all and start once more.
Poverty and hunger, at home, had been doubled too.
He wished an accident would happen and he'd be impaired for life or disfigured or dead, so that this would stop. So that all of this would stop. He'd promised Lenore. So please - but please - if an accident happens, it won't be my fault. Five seconds and I have no head, I'm just a body, like Lou Lou. Like Louella, in a pool of blood spilled on the marble floor. Even Silka, eyeless and monstrous in my nightmares. I'm Mayselee with my neck torn. Lifeless, maybe blameless if lucky. Maybe free.
But Haymitch knows that he can never be free.
If I died by accident, they'd just stitch me back together like one of their mutts; doll me up like a parrot sewn by death.
Proud and perpetual.
He cared. He didn't want this.
He didn't care. He walked to the edge of the cage as if it could get bigger but there was no escape.
He walked up to the Capitols again, like they were the ones in the cage and he was the one looking in at the oddities.
He wasn't, he was trapped, he was circled by ravens.
Effie moved in his line of sight, like an iridescent speck of light. She was there and gone again. Where was she?
He'd seen her. She was coral. She was beautiful, or maybe he was fucking drunk. How old was she? At her birthday, by the end of the Victory tour, how old did Vitus say she was turning? 25? 26?
Around him, a group of about 8 women tried to get into the cage. They were throwing him food and personal amulets, screaming obscenities. Two Peacekeepers finally came and said that if they wanted to take him with them they needed to sober up first. They hung around the cage for an hour, and Haymitch felt ashamed that he started to feel scared.
One of them demands for a Peacekeeper, incompetent fool, to open up the cage immediately, I want a picture with it.
And then there she is, seemingly out of thin air, in her floral ensemble.
"Now, now, ladies, I think our Victor needs a bit of rest."
"Effie Trinket, darling! What a bore you are! But you can't be in your right mind! He's your Victor, you should be glowing with pride! Keeping it all for yourself, dear, is it? That isn't fair!"
"Him." Haymitch hears Effie say through gritted teeth.
"What?!"
And she looks like she could dig her long nails into the emanciated faces of these monsters.
"I think we should give him a bit of oxygen. We've all had such a long, busy day!"
The Peacekeeper is coming. "Miss Trinket, I'm a man of my word, I promised our lovely ladies here a picture or whatever with the boy. Step aside, please."
Effie frowns deeply, and Haymitch sees that she's thinking. He wouldn't have thought it at first, but he's come to consider that she has the second-to-most obstinate look he's ever seen on someone. Louella had the first.
"Oh, come on, party-popper, you're starting to get on my nerves." One of the women from the entourage says, and it sounds like a proper threat.
"Miss Trinket, move aside."
Effie's fingers wrap around one of the bars of the cage.
"May I remind you that we all have a duty to treat our Victors with due respect and reverence. This young man is a hero of Panem, and that's how he must be treated. He's under my responsibility and I believe it's imperative he gets some rest. He will pose for no more photos tonight. Look at this wonderful party! There's so much to do! You should enjoy the rest of your evening."
Begrudgingly, they turn around and leave. For tonight.
Owe you one, Trinket.
"As for you, Mr. Arch," she told the Peacekeeper, and her tone lowered considerably, "I'm unpleasantly surprised by your conduct and I hope I won't have to report you. Your job is to protect the Victor, it's a shame that's not what I see you're doing."
Through a hazy vision, Haymitch saw a cloud of malice cross over the man's eyes before he smiled at Effie. "Pretty face, you look better with your mouth shut."
She turned red and furious but, with the utmost composure and pride, simply uttered: "You're drunk."
Haymitch was about to say something, but the man walked away.
"I'm sorry it took me an hour." Effie breathed out, still fuming. "I won't be going anywhere."
Haymitch felt his head buzzing, he leaned against the wall, next to her.
"Playing Peacekeeper, now? Your talents never cease."
"I couldn't. I can't stand monochrome."
Haymitch hadn't expected to burst out laughing.
*************
So it was that four and a half years later Haymitch was the one disappearing at parties. With his popularity rapidly decreasing, the interest in him fading over more recent, younger tributes, and no cage now, no one could keep him from the alcohol. He drank until his senses were blind in these parties that he attended less and less.
Everything was more lavish, the elites were richer, the Capitol stole more and more from the Districts with each passing year. People were uglier, their clothes even more ridiculous (however that is possible), everything gold and metal, no more plastic, all jewelry. Haymitch's vision was blurred, all the time, but he was under the impression that in all this, Effie, somehow, had only gotten more beautiful.
Not that he cared, he frankly didn't even really know why he noticed. But he noticed these things about her. Every year, several times during the year, when he saw her.
Shame and indifference in equal measure, he kept noticing that about himself, too. It was shameful to somehow consider he was looking that way at someone from the Capitol. Looking at her and that smile, those cutting blue eyes so tender in the wake of rare sincerity. Her hands which only ever shook under tables. Looking at her and finding himself looking at a person he wanted to touch, to hold. So much he was trying to avoid.
Around, shapes moving quickly in the party. Serpents all. They were serpents themselves, looking for shelter or prey. It was common that they often wouldn't run into each other at parties, big as they were.
So Haymitch was surprised when he saw her move in the blink of an eye, some man grabbing her arm angrily. Trying to sharpen his vision, he saw her bite back with heavy words, and her arms moved with her words.
The man took a step back and screamed something at her, loud enough for all around to hear. "... won't ever be anything because I can ruin your precious career, doll." Was what Haymitch caught.
From her: "It's absolutely improper that..." "Frankly shameful" "I am sorry, but..."
Her face was growing red and if there is something Haymitch can find in people's eyes is fear. He walked up closer to them to hear the conversation, unnoticed in the crowd.
By then the man was speaking close to her face, hand brushing against her arm. "I took you to be the kind of girl who can make the best choice for herself. Why the resistance? You can be so much more, earn your place at the top, but you need to stop being such a prude."
"I..." Was she speechless?
"You know what they say... keep it all to yourself, get District Twelve."
What the fuck?
"I'm very pleased working for 12. It's a misrepresented district that deserves much better than it gets from you."
He chuckled cruelly. "A misrepresented district you will never get out off because you don't allow yourself to have a bit of fun." At this, he slapped her ass and her hands turned into fists.
Over Haymitch, a few meters away, a growing smoke of iridescent rage.
"Maybe we'll make it worse for them next year. You know, 50 years of this and it's starting to get boring. Maybe I'll have a word with Heavensbee, stir things up. Damn, it's such a shame with you. I'm giving you one last chance here."
Behind him, a second man came up. Haymitch knew his face, but he couldn't remember from where. He looked familiar. But amidst thousands of faces across five years it becomes hard to tell.
"Maybe you'll change your mind after the next Games, you prideful, arrogant, traitor whore." The second man said, loud enough to draw attention.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Arch? You should be ashamed of this disreputable behaviour. Please check yourself before you ---"
"Yeah, yeah, calm down, love." The first one interrupted. "Gaius here still has some of his rude, Peacekeeper demeanor. Old habits die hard. He's not usually like this."
So that's who he was, the Peacekeeper Effie confronted five years ago, a Gamemaker now. "Come on, man, she won't get down on her knees for you if you keep insulting her grandfather."
In what seemed like a long second, Haymitch had instinctively crossed the space between them and was moving to beat the smiles out of their sick, smug faces without even thinking. Effie's voice rose clearly over the crowd and the music in Haymitch's head when she said:
"You are disgusting, incompetent men. I would loose my job without a second thought over going to bed with any of you."
And then the first one fell face flat to the floor under a collective gasp of the crowd.
"Who the fuck...? Abernathy?"
The former Peacekeeper moved towards Haymitch but wasn't fast enough. He got a hard push against the wall and a punch to the face.
"Security!" The first one called with a bloody mouth that gave Effie an insatiable satisfaction to see.
"Old sick fucks. Plutarch will love to hear about this." He turned to Effie. "Everyone's staring, let's go."
With a hand over her arm - firmly, but gently - he led her out of the hall. She followed him angrily, walking past the inquisitive looks with the air of an empress.
Plutarch's old words echoed through Haymitch's brain. What's stopping you?
A lot of old words were echoing in Effie's, too. From men she never loved, from women who didn't understand love, from a sister she wanted to protect, from the face in the mirror she often despised.
They ended up alone behind the outside balcony in the lower level of the mansion. Effie's face was redder than before, and her eyes were glossy.
Implicit submission.
She started crying.
Haymitch fell silent. He fumbled words around in his head but he didn't in fact have any idea of what to tell this woman that he never saw crying. No idea what to tell any woman after a situation like this.
But, just like that, she ran a finger under her eyes and stopped. The self control she had was sad and scary. She straightened her bracelets, and for a moment it looked like whatever woman he just saw was gone again. Always an evasive ghost-like figure in the periphery of Haymitch's vision. An apparition, a running bride from a failed ceremony. A dissident, weaving more layers of consent and submission into her skin until, years later, she'd succeeded in turning herself into a Capitol doll, unreachable and unrecognizable, except for the grace and obstinacy in her eyes.
But they didn't know that, then. They were still young.
She looked at him, and he expected some kind of thank you that he didn't need. But she simply said, voice wavering still:
"I'm really glad you were there. You're a good man, Haymitch. You're a really good man."
What they knew then is that they were broken, broken, broken.