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Early April 76 ADD - Two Months After Katniss Everdeen's Trial - Victors' Village of District 12
"Where are you going?" Katniss's voice shocked Haymitch, causing him to jump slightly from where he was putting his jacket on. He was standing at the bottom of her staircase and had been hoping to be able to sneak out before she got out of bed. If she got out of bed at all.
Honestly, he'd really been hoping to be in and out before she even noticed he was gone. Katniss couldn't leave District 12 and it didn't feel right to rub it in her face that he could when she couldn't, perhaps when she might've wanted to go with him, once she knew where he was going. She probably would, what with that big heart she thought she hid so well when she really didn't.
"Out."
He could practically hear her eyes roll. "I can see that. But where?"
Haymitch wondered how honest he should be with the girl behind him. He'd always been one for bluntness and not treating her with kid gloves, not when she wasn't really a kid anymore. She'd be eighteen next month. But he couldn't help but admit that he had begun to treat her like that, since they'd returned to District 12, where it was harder to ignore his old demons and the new ones gained from the war. They were far to similar, she and he. And maybe if someone else had been a bit more honest with him back then, maybe things could've been different.
Maybe he wouldn't have pushed everybody away.
But he'd be damned if he let this girl do the same things he did.
"I'm going to District 3. Wiress's funeral is today."
"You aren't supposed to leave me alone."
"No. But I'll be back in a few hours and I don't think you'll be the one to snitch on me, sweetheart."
Katniss was silent for a few moments. "You didn't go to anyone else's funerals. Why Wiress's?"
"I owe it to her."
He sighed, turning to sit down on the stairs below the former Mockingjay. Wiress had kept him alive for far longer than he'd like to give her credit for. Only four years older than him, barely, but she'd looked out for him and even indulged with him in his self-destruction during her darker years. He'd watched as they'd gotten older and she'd fallen in love, grown a family against the odds. It hurt him that she had fought harder than he felt that he ever had, but she would never get to see the fruits of her labor while he would.
And in all honesty, if their roles had been reversed, and he'd died while she lived, he knew she would've been one of the first to Twelve to see him off to that sweet old Hereafter that Lenore Dove had spoken so fondly of. She probably would've dragged Beetee with her too, and the whole ragtag Latier clan from District 3.
So yeah, he'd definitely say he owed it to her to be there.
He hadn't meant to reveal too much, but evidently something in his tone had because Katniss came to sit down next to him next to him on the stairs. "I didn't realize you knew her that well."
"Well I did. She was my mentor. Then she was my friend."
"So she was to you what you are to me?"
"No." Haymitch snorted. "She was better."
"No one ever talks about her. Beetee did, sometimes. And Peeta mentioned her once...and I didn't know her that well." she said, tugging at the end of her braid. It was messy and falling apart at the seams.
"Nobody really did. They wrote her off as crazy, a genius, but crazy. It was easier to do that than to understand...all of it. All of her, really. I didn't understand her either. But she kept me alive and I respected-no, respect-the hell out of her." he said. "One day...one day I'll tell you about all of it. A kook, she definitely was, but so crazy smart and a right hellion when she wanted to be. But so smart that I didn't always understand half of what she was saying. Sometimes it was barely English and other times she would just snark me out." he said, feeling the misty haze of reminisce fall over him.
"Did she always speak in riddles?" Katniss asked.
"No. I knew her, before." Before Snow had tried to break her and failed miserably. But that Wiress, she was a distant memory.
How many times had Wiress held her ground against his drunken insults, his rants where he blamed her and her song for his survival? How many times had she refused to apologize for bringing him home? How many times had she and Effie ganged up on him about his drinking? How many times had Beetee pulled her away before she went in for the kill with her words? That was the Wiress he remembered.
Snarky and bold, caring too much for an old dog like himself.
"Before...?"
He shook his head, looking down at his feet. "Nothing just before."
"You'll tell me later?"
"One day, sweetheart. But not today."
"Not today." His former tribute echoed.
The journey to District 3 didn't take nearly as long as Haymitch thought it would. Maybe he thought a longer train ride would prepare him for this. He was no stranger to funerals, they happened all too often in District 12 and in Panem as a whole, even more so after the war. But Wiress, who had been one of his closest friends, it was hard to think about. An impossible situation, one he wouldn't have predicted.
If he'd had to pick any of the Victors to survive the Third Quarter Quell and the war that followed, Wiress would've been at the top of his list. She was smarter than everybody else and he knew for a fact that Beetee wouldn't let anything happen to her. Neither would Katniss, he knew, once she had gotten to know her. The girl had a thing for taking in strays, just like he had done so many years before.
Death was inevitable in the Games, but Wiress? She'd outsmarted Snow's arenas twice.
She was the one he would've bet on to survive. Maybe the Careers, from One and Two, Johanna and Finnick with their own special flavors of brutality. And Beetee, despite his suicidal tendencies, since Plutarch (and by extension, Coin) needed him to be able to do their dirty work. Chaff would've been too focused on trying to get Haymitch's kids out without any regard for his own well-being, and Blight would've been fighting like hell to survive but too focused on Johanna that he'd get sloppy. Lexus and Sam would've been detoxing, cold turkey, they would've died quickly from natural causes more quickly than anybody. Cecelia had just had a baby, she wouldn't have been as strong as she once was. And Woof, Seeder, and Mags were the oldest in the Arena; they never had a chance.
But Wiress? He would've bet on her to survive on her own merit, with that big brain of hers.
He got off the train and stepped onto the platform, momentarily shocked by the chill. It was cold so often in Three, Wiress and Beetee had mentioned before, with more wintry months than summery sweltering heat; they'd compared the weather to a metronome swinging back and forth, never particularly predictable. Not that either of them had never tried to do so, as Wiress went on some sort of weather kick in the early sixties. Haymitch stared up at the sky, shades of pale blue and grey, the sun shining so dull and covered by clouds of smog.
Familiar, yet different.
Haymitch walked alone from the train station to the farthest end of District 3, where the Victors' Village laid hidden. There was a small graveyard back there, per Beetee's letter. They would bury Wiress there, in the tall grass, between the two other victors that they'd lost. They didn't have a body to bury for Wiress, so they would be burying a box of things that she'd loved, just so that they wouldn't have to bury an empty grave. He walked past two other graveyards on the way there, one much larger than the other with a sleek metal sign that simply read tributes. His heart froze in his chest for a moment at the sight, knowing that little Ampert Latier was probably buried there with his district partners.
Maybe he'd have the chance to visit, before he left. If he could stomach it.
There was another graveyard next to it, for the others of District 3. Both were the same, perfectly manicured dead grass and graves made of clean white stone. The only thing that separated them were the wrought-iron gates. He wondered how many parents were buried just to the left of their children, not even together in death. He wondered if the same would happen him when he passed. Twelve didn't have a Victors' graveyard, it was only him and that girl that had disappeared.
Would Katniss and Peeta make their own for him? Like the Covey had done for themselves? Or would he get to be buried next to his Ma and Sid?
Haymitch brushed the morbid thoughts away, attempting to steady himself. Maybe he'd had the wrong idea, trying to get through this without drinking. He could almost hear Effie's voice in his head now, not the fancy high-pitched tone she put on for the kids, but her real voice. Sobriety would be good for you, Haymitch. He couldn't stand it. Didn't like the shaking or the aches, or the hallucinations that he wasn't entirely sure didn't come from the lack of it.
At least when he drank, he could pretend it was the alcohol.
The Victors' Village looked the same as every other he'd seen, the same cookie cutter template copied twelve times over. But it was surrounded in tall grass, yellowy and blowing in the wind. There was the remnants of snow on the ground, melting and turning the gravel darker. He found the crowd of people towards the back of the house he presumed had housed the Latier family. It was a larger crowd than Haymitch had expected, not realizing just how well-liked Wiress had been.
It was a sea of black and grey bodies, all of them sullen and grieving. How many were grieving Wiress-the-person and not Wiress-the-inventor or Wiress-the-rebel, he didn't know, but he did notice one face that was mysteriously absent.
He caught sight of Beetee easily, at the front of the crowd in his silvery wheelchair, looking smaller and older than he'd ever known him to be. A girl stood next to him, with a mass of curly dark hair flowing around her shoulders and wearing dark blue dress that stood out with all of the black that he'd seen. He walked over to them, worming his way through the crowd. It was when he caught sight of the girl's face that he nearly did a double-take and it hit him who exactly that girl is. Beetee and Wiress's daughter, the girl that Beetee had been so sure hadn't survived. He hadn't realized it before, not until he saw her.
Willa, that was her name. She looked familiar, though he'd never seen her before, but it was a face he'd seen before; twice, twenty-six years ago. Her face was like her mother's, when he had first met her and in the years before their friendship had become strained. But there was something else too, something that couldn't make him hold back his gasp. Ampert. She looked like her brother around the eyes and Haymitch couldn't forget those, forget how they looked as he got torn apart.
He was looking at a living ghost. Haymitch took a step back unable to go any further to offer his condolences. He stumbled back through the crowd, deciding hiding in the back would be the best thing for him. He would say something later, once everyone had left. It would be easier that way.
Especially if it meant that he wouldn't have to look into those eyes again.
Haymitch wasn't the only one hiding in the back of the crowd. His eyes widened when he saw Johanna standing much further back than he was, as if already plotting out her escape. Johanna, like Effie and Peeta, was meant to be in some sort of hospital in the remains of the Capitol to work through her morphling addiction. Some sort of rehab facility, expensive, but the bill was being footed by Plutarch. She was wearing the same coat she'd been wearing the day of Snow's execution and her hair had grown a little more, dark strands whisping past her ears. Her skin was slightly tanned from her time in District 4 (as he'd last heard she'd been staying after rehab) and she had on big sunglasses that took up most of her face, making her look ridiculous in the current weather.
He walked up to her, figuring it would be better to hide together than to hide alone. There were only so many of them left after all, they had to stick together.
"I didn't think I'd see you here, Jo."
"I didn't think I'd come."
"Then why did you?"
"Blight. He would've come. Wiress was one of his closest friends, y'know? And she would've come to his." Johanna took a deep shuddering breath, looking down at her muddy boots. "He always told me that out of all of the Victors, if I couldn't go to him or Rowan or anybody else, to go to Wiress. She was the best of the bunch. A weird motherfucker, for sure, but she was the best."
"Can't argue with you there."
Johanna continued. "And I was so horrible to her before...you know? I know that she said it was fine and she always gave just as good as she got, but my last memories of her are of me telling everybody how crazy she was. I mean, she definitely had a few screws loose here and there, but who didn't? And yeah, the singing and the 'tick-tock's were getting annoying. But I could've been kinder to her. We were in an impossible situation and I just...made it worse. I just wish I apologized before I had the chance."
Haymitch whistled, long and low. "Well, guess those sessions with Dr. Aurelius have helped. I never imagined the day I would see big, bad Johanna Mason apologizing."
"I never thought I'd see the day that you were sober, Haymitch Abernathy." she quipped back, still as sharp as ever.
"Mostly sober, sweetheart. Get it right."
They both laughed and there was silence between them for a moment as they stared out at the small crowd of people still standing around Wiress's grave. Haymitch's eyes locked back on two people in particular. Beetee and Willa. The young girl, younger than Wiress was when she mentored him, was standing next to her father with a strength that Haymitch hadn't had when he lost his own mother.
"She was a mom, you know."
Johanna turned to him, sharply. "What?"
"Wiress. She was a mom. And that," he pointed at Willa. "is her daughter. Willa. She's sixteen, if I remember correctly."
"Still in reaping age."
"No. Not anymore. Because of her. And all of us. She doesn't have to worry anymore, Jo." he said, hoping he sounded more comforting than he thought he did. "I don't think Wiress would be too upset about dying if it meant that her kid didn't have to live in fear of dying in the Games. And I don't think she was mad at you for how you treated her either, annoyed maybe, because she didn't like getting treated like she was crazy, but not mad. She would've forgiven you, if she were here."
"Because she was a mom?"
"That. And because she was Wiress and she knew that that wasn't really you. She could be spooky like that sometimes."
The younger woman rolled her eyes. "What is it with all of you adults and saying that my behavior isn't really me? What if it is? This is me, deal with it."
"You can't say that because you are an adult, Johanna. You've been one for years now."
"Yeah because I never got to be a kid again."
Haymitch didn't know how to respond to that, not when he knew it was true. You couldn't survive the Games and go back home the same kid you once were. It was impossible. If anything, you went home decades-even centuries-older than your original age. Sometimes he felt like he'd aged a hundred years instead of twenty-six, all of the loss and pain, the trauma (the drinking) did that to you.
The service continued on quickly, ending as the crowd in front of them started to slowly disperse, leaving Beetee and his daughter as the last ones at the grave. Willa and an older girl eventually left too, arm-in-arm, back towards the Latier home and leaving Beetee alone. Haymitch nudged Johanna and the two of them made their way over to Beetee. The older man was simply staring off at the gravestone. There was a photo in a frame on top of it, one of Wiress in her workshop, smiling and holding a small metal trinket, a bird of some sort. It was recent, in the last couple of years or so.
She looked happy, relaxed, free. He wondered if that's why Beetee had selected the photo.
"That's a good photo of Nuts." Johanna said, blunt as ever.
"Thank you. Our son took it a few years ago." Beetee sounded as tired as he looked. He didn't even correct Johanna on the nickname. "It was her favorite. He gifted it to her for the Harvest and she never took it down, not once."
"Well, it's a good one." she said. Her tone was almost a whisper for the next part, "I'm sorry for your loss, Beetee. I'm sorry there wasn't anything we could do for her."
The older man laughed, it was a bitter sound. One Haymitch recognized all too well. "She knew she was going to die, my Wiress did. A canary in a coal mine always knows when they're going to die. The air was bad and she knew it, she knew it before any of us. And we didn't listen." His eyes were glassy, the effect magnified by his glasses.
Haymitch stayed quiet. He knew it would be better to just let Beetee have his rant around two people who couldn't (and wouldn't) judge him for it. He'd probably been holding onto this for the last year, not wanting to scare anyone, especially his daughter. This was a man who had lost everyone in one fell swoop. Twice. It was an unimaginable feeling, but one that he knew both he and Johanna understood. All three of them had had families once upon a time, before Snow picked them off one-by-one like they had been dirt on the bottom of his shoe.
So Beetee was allowed to be angry. Haymitch was angry. Johanna was angry. There wasn't anything else that you could be, when you were the only one left.
"I'm sorry, Beetee. I know it doesn't really mean anything, but I really am." Haymitch said at last. "She was one of the best people I've ever met. Definitely the smartest. I hope you know just how much I cared about her and respected her, even if it didn't always seem like I did, especially when I was younger. I know I used to put her and Mags and Effie through the ringer."
"That you did, that you did." The older man chuckled, causing a few tears to slip down his cheeks. "But she would've done it anyway. Wiress joined in on her own fair share of shenanigans too, if you'll recall."
Johanna's eyes sparkled a little bit. "I think I'd like to hear some of those stories. It would be a lot less depressing than this."
"I think I have some alcohol somewhere in the house. Come join us for a few drinks?" Beetee said, wiping his glasses off with his shirt.
Johanna nodded before turning to Haymitch. "You coming?"
"No, you go on ahead. I just need a minute."
"Good. Because I think you have company." Beetee said, pointing to someone, somewhere behind Haymitch before he and Johanna made their way up to his house.
Haymitch didn't have to turn to see who it was. Not when he could smell the rose scent from the perfume Effie favored.
"Sobriety looks good on you, Haymitch Abernathy." A familiar voice crowed from behind him. He still didn't turn, just closed his eyes and inhaled as she stepped closer to him. He'd missed her, much more than he cared to admit.
"Effie," he said. "I didn't know you'd be here."
"Katniss called and told me where you'd be today. If I'd known earlier, I would've come with you."
At that, Haymitch turned to look at her, finally. She was...Effie, but not. She was still bone thin and too pale, her cheeks ruddy from the cold weather and bags under her eyes that the blue in them even brighter. There wasn't a stitch of makeup on her face. She was wearing a wig, not a brightly colored one, but cheap and soft and blonde, almost like her natural hair had been before they'd sheered it off in The Capitol. Her dress was black and grey and so very plain looking, not like Effie at all. Overall, she looked more somber and not like herself, as she tugged her coat tighter around her and tried to hide her shivers.
In a moment, he was shucking off his own jacket and laying it over Effie's shoulders, despite the woman's protests. "I thought they were keeping you in that hospital. Doctors' orders." he muttered as he did so.
"They did. But I knew this would be hard, so I got permission to leave." And by 'got permission', he knew she meant that she'd gone to Plutarch to pull some strings. "You didn't go to the memorial in Eleven for Seeder and Chaff."
"I couldn't. It was right in the middle of the trial."
"I know."
Haymitch let the silence between them stretch for a moment before breaking it. "Why're you here, Eff?"
"I-I told you already."
"No, you told me the bullshit reason. Tell me the real one, princess."
Effie snorted, but quickly righted herself. "Princess, really? Oh where, oh where do you get your creativity, Haymitch?"
"Effie..."
"Fine." she blew a piece of fake hair out of her eyes, not looking at him, but at the photograph of Wiress in front of them. "I considered her a friend too, as crazy as that might seem. We talked, sometimes, you know. I wouldn't have called us best friends, but I respected her and she respected me."
"What did you even talk about? Me?" he said, with an over-exagerrated waggle of his eyebrows.
"We did have more things in common besides you, you know. She was interested in some of the architecture I used to design, before I became...she even gave me some structural tips a time or two. She was one of the few who didn't see me as just a pretty face. And yes, sometimes we did talk about you. It was inevitable. We both worried about you."
Before he could respond, Effie turned to him with a smile that was a little too bright in the cold. "Why don't we go inside and warm up? I think it's time."
Haymitch spared one last glance at the shiny stone in front of them, the silvery placard and the words it said:
Wiress Lila Pallweber
November 11, 30 ADD - July 12, 75 ADD
Inventor, Victor, Rebel, Mother
Died Fighting For A Free Panem
He was stuck on that last line. She'd died for a world that she'd never see, but believed so deeply in. She believed in a cause that Haymitch had once found impossible. She never got to leave the Arena that second time, she never got to go home and her family didn't even have a body to bury. But Wiress's death wouldn't be in vain. Her daughter would get to grow up in this free Panem and never have to worry about another sunrise on the reaping. It was a thought that shouldn't have been as comforting as it was.
But one last look at what was to be left of one of his oldest friends, and a small sliver of peace settled in his chest. A small smile on his face as he offered up his elbow for Effie to take.
"It's time. Yeah, I think it's time to go home."