Chapter Text
Haymitch Abernathy wakes up to a sharp pain in his head, and someone knocking at his door.
It only occurs to him that the noise might be knocking after a minute or two of his head throbbing in time with it. He blinks fuzzily, and the world spins as he lifts himself up onto one arm. His mouth is dry. It takes him a minute or two to crack open his eyes, wincing, and let the sunlight that spills through his blinds really hit him.
He’s inside his own home for once. Honestly, that’s a real surprise. Usually he gets blackout drunk and then wakes up somewhere in an alley. Or in someone else’s house. Or—well, the general idea is there.
He sits up and takes stock of himself. He’s laying on the floor of his living room, sprawled awkwardly in front of the couch that’s covered in laundry. Apart from that, the place is cleaner than usual. Haymitch figures he hasn’t been here all too often. He’s being run ragged with the newest gig, and when he’s not getting drunk on set he’s getting drunk out at a bar. The gal he pays to drop by once in a blue moon and pick up must be doing her job.
He sits against the couch, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He’s relieved to find no leftover crust of vomit there. Great. So hopefully he didn’t leave a puddle of puke somewhere in the house. That’d be a pain to clean up.
Whoever is knocking can wait, he decides, as he shucks his thick winter coat off and loosens the tie that Drunk Haymitch had apparently decided to strangle himself with instead of taking off. The winter coat lands somewhere on the floor. The tie follows, before he gives up wrestling with the dress shirt and peels that off too. It’s easier to grab a shirt off the pile on the couch above him than get up just yet, so he does that.
Once he’s somewhat presentable, he scrubs a hand over his face and puts his other hand on the arm of the couch. He hoists himself up to his feet and his stomach lurches with him. Queasy. Has he eaten in the past 24 hours?
“God,” Haymitch rasps, grimacing. His voice is hoarse. He couldn’t speak above a whisper even if he wanted to, but with the massive headache he’s got going on, he’s fine with being quiet for a bit.
He runs a hand through his hair, pulling out the small knots and tangles he finds. He stops when he remembers Cinna’s quiet threat to kill him for ruining his hair. The stylist isn’t at all bad, Haymitch just thinks he’s driven a bit insane sometimes. Part of that might be Haymitch’s own fault. Oops.
Haymitch makes a mental note to remember to brush his hair.
By the time he’s up and ambling down the hall towards the front door, it registers that the knocking has stopped. And whenever he opens the door there’s nobody there.
There is, however, an envelope left on his doorstep.
He frowns at it. Leans down (ignoring the way his stomach protests) and picks it up, weighing it in his hands. It’s decently heavy. And it’s addressed to him in neat, sharp cursive on the front that he doesn’t recognize. Fanmail, maybe? Haymitch mentally shrugs, and leans on the doorframe as he slips his thumb under the seal and pops it.
He used to be wary about these sorts of things. But that was back when he was a child actor. And besides, whoever’s trying to get ahold of him seems to have gotten past the gated community’s security guard. So this can’t be too dangerous. If Haymitch’s wrong, then, well. He’s wrong. And Plutarch’s out an actor.
Haymitch pulls the papers out of the envelope and unfolds them. He skims the words—then pauses, does a double-take at the word ‘custody.’ Forces himself to go back to the beginning and rereads it, more in depth this time.
Hello, Mr. Abernathy!
He doesn’t know how much time passes while he stares at the papers, but it’s long enough that the golden light of just-past-midday begins to turn into sunset’s telltale orange and red. The winter wind breezes past him, and he welcomes the way it makes his lungs and throat ache.
A dog barks somewhere nearby.
Tree branches rattle.
His mouth, he notes, is dry again.
Haymitch’s eyes are stuck on the word custody.
Finally, he manages to rouse himself. Turns and moves back into the house. Reaches out to force the door shut. Then, Haymitch mechanically crosses to where he’d thrown his jacket. Digging around in his pockets, he draws out his phone and fumbles with the buttons. Still staring at the papers he’s gripping in his hands, he lifts it to his ear and listens to it ring.
You’ve reached Chaff. Couldn’t come to the phone right now. State your business after the tone.
No doubt Chaff’s also hungover. Haymitch clears his throat to rid it of that quiet rasp before he begins talking. It doesn’t work too well. He wouldn’t put it past himself to have been gargling nails last night.
“Hey, man.” He can’t figure out what to say. So instead he lets dead air and his shaky breathing fill the silence for him as the seconds tick by. Finally, after about half a minute, he manages a hoarse, “call me back? Sometime soon, preferably. I need advice.”
Burdock Everdeen is dead.
But no. That’s not all. Imagine that being all. It’s worse, in a way, because if it was just that, Haymitch thinks he could survive. He could handle it. It’s a sickening thing to think, but it’s the truth. He’d just ignore the invitation to the funeral (just how many funerals can you go to before you hit your forties?) and end up finding a way to get banned from his twenty-third bar, but in the end he’d survive.
No. Haymitch could never be that lucky. Burdock is not just dead, because the bastard could never just be dead. He went out in some kind of underground explosion. Haymitch wonders what the hell could have convinced Burdock Everdeen to go underground. The man who could catch Mother Nature herself’s ear, the teenage boy who would drag Haymitch out into the woods behind his house from sunrise to sundown.
He gets caught up in memories of swingsets and dark freckled skin, fireflies and catching tadpoles in bug nets, scraped knees and rusty bikes with trading cards rubber-banded to the back so they’d sound like a motorcycle, so caught up that he forgets his phone’s still recording the voicemail.
He pulls it away from his ear and looks at it. No, never mind. It must’ve stopped recording after a few minutes. Or maybe he’d accidentally hung up. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Haymitch is free to turn his attention back to the letter.
Custody. Burdock is dead, just dead, and Asterid Everdeen has relinquished custody of their darling children. Unfit. Unwilling, maybe. And the neat, cursive handwriting is kindly informing still-hungover Haymitch Abernathy that there’s no next of kin. That he’s now the guardian of said two children. And the writer of the letter is so sorry she dropped by while he wasn’t in today, won’t he please call—
Haymitch idly dials Chaff’s number again, and squints at the name on the paper.
—child welfare worker Ms. Trinket as soon as he can. So the two of them can have a face-to-face meeting about this. So she can work out a time to drop by for an assessment before the children are placed in his care. The children. Burdock’s kids have been placed in the care of a drunk actor.
In his ear, the call goes to voicemail again. You’ve reached Chaff. The tone plays. Seconds begin to tick by again, until Haymitch can’t handle the silence.
“Call me back, jackass,” Haymitch spits, because suddenly the words ‘Mr. Everdeen has passed’ are making the room spin. Because pretty, neat cursive lettering is going to cause whatever food he managed to choke down last night come back up. Because the answer to the funeral question is somewhere between eleven and too many.
The words are beginning to tremble on the page, and it takes him a second to realize it’s because his whole body is shaking. His chest is heaving with the effort to bring air in and out, and he just barely manages to snarl the last two words.
“Right now.”