Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Waiting, Effie Trinket stood between these poles of despair, a splash of Capitol vibrancy that only made the grey morning gloomier. Her dress was a confection of spring green and white, absurdly cheerful against the weathered wood and dull metal. She tapped a foot clad in a heel so precise it could puncture a lung, her face a mask of professionally strained patience. The clock in her head, synced to the Capitol’s ruthless schedule, ticked audibly in the set of her shoulders.

The Peacekeepers deposited Haymitch before her like a sack of malfunctioning parts. He swayed, of course he will, but found his balance with the practiced clumsiness of the perpetually inebriated, and offered her a smile. It wasn’t charming, not so much. But it was a gash of teeth in a stubbled, pallid face, an unapologetic display of his current state.

"You're late." Her voice was clipped, devoid of its usual melodic lilt. It was the voice she used for logistical failures. "Again."

"Ah, please," he slurred, waving a dismissive hand that cut too close to her bodice. Yet, she didn’t flinch. "It's only early morning. Sun’s barely yawned."

"We are thirty-two minutes behind schedule, Haymitch. The Reaping footage is already being edited in the Capitol. We have fittings, and briefings, and—"

"Oh, God, okay!" he barked, the false cheer vanishing into irritation. "Didn't realize you were so eager to send these poor souls to their death. Got a hot date waiting in the city with a bowl of punch?"

Effie’s jaw tightened so sharply he could almost hear the click. For a second, something raw flashed in her eyes—not hurt, but a furious and impotent frustration. She mastered it though, smoothing back her features into something colder in the next second.

"You are right." she said, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous register. "It is still early morning." She placed a hand on his hand, holding it, not gently, and pulled him hard to the train. He stumbled back a step, the Peacekeepers having already melted away. "And that make absolutely no reason for you to pick a fight with me. Now, let's move."

"I'm not picking a fight with you," he grumbled, allowing himself to be herded up the steps and into the gleaming belly of the train.

"Fine," she said, the word a sharp exhale. "Let us pretend it was your other self who said that. The one who currently reeks of regret and cheap grain alcohol. Nevertheless, let's move, move, move! We have events to catch!"

The door hissed shut, sealing them in the plush, silent tomb of Capitol transit. The world outside began to slide away, District 12 blurring into a smear of grey and green. Effie didn’t pause to watch it go. She strode ahead, her heels sinking into the deep carpet, a general leading a disastrous soldier to the front.

Their destination was the dining car, a tableau of oppressive Capitol elegance. A mahogany table groaned under a spread of food too colorful, too perfect, to look edible. And at the table, two small islands of drab homespun in a sea of velvet and chrome: the tributes.

Haymitch’s eyes, bleary and bloodshot, slid over them without interest. A boy, maybe fifteen, all sharp elbows and sunken cheeks, trying to look taller. A girl, younger, with mousy hair and eyes so wide they seemed to consume half her face. They looked at the food with a mix of hunger and terror, as if the glazed fruits might bite back.

Just before she pushed open the final ornate door, Effie stopped. It was a subtle pause, one a less observant or less sober man would have missed. But Haymitch, weaving slightly behind her, didn’t. He saw her spine straighten, then soften for a millisecond. He saw her eyes close, her chest rise and fall in one deep, deliberate breath held just a beat too long. It was as if she was pulling a curtain inside herself, dimming the lights on one room and flooding another with a harsh, performative glow. It was as if she was shaking off the Effie who had just been annoyed on a cold platform, the Effie who tolerates his impossible manners fpr the sake of humanity and understanding his ghost, and steeling herself into the Effie who greeted lambs for the slaughter with a sparkling smile.

Standing behind her, Haymitch felt a dull throb of curiosity pierce the alcoholic haze. "What are you doing, Trinket?" he muttered, his voice like gravel.

She, however, ignored him. The transformation was complete. She pushed the door open, and sunshine poured from her face.

"Look who I found!" she trilled, her voice now a full octave higher, a Capitol sonata. Her hand swept through the air in a grand, practiced gesture towards him. "Your mentor! The victor of the 50th Hunger Games, Haymitch Abernathy!"

Haymitch rolled his eyes so hard he feel that he just saw his own brain, or maybe that was just the hangover. But he shuffled past her, his target clear: the crystal decanter of amber liquid glinting like a promise on the sideboard. He poured three fingers, neat, the pouring sound obscenely loud in the silent car.

Only then did he let his gaze properly land on the kids. They stared back, the boy with a wary blankness, the girl with a flicker of something that might have been hope. It made his stomach turn, and it wasn't the liquor.

Looking back to Effie, he found her already gracefully took the seat beside his, directly across from the male tribute. Her smile was cemented in place. "As you may already know," she chirped, "Haymitch will be your guiding hand in the Capitol! He'll help you with strategy, with sponsors, with all the clever little things that can make all the difference in the arena!" She said it like she was explaining the rules of a particularly exciting garden party game.

Haymitch slumped into the chair opposite the girl, the glass cool in his palm. He took a long swallow, letting the fire scour his throat before answering. "Am I?" he asked, his tone flat.

A flicker—minuscule, but there—passed over Effie’s perfect facade. A crack in the porcelain. It was gone in an instant, repaired with a layer of even brighter determination. "Yes, you are," she said, and her tone was a fascinating thing. It was reassuring, soft around the edges, but underpinned by a steel thread of command. It was the voice of a nanny correcting a toddler, willing the statement into truth through sheer force of etiquette. "Right?"

"Hmm," Haymitch grunted. He took another drink, then set the glass down with a sharp clink. He let his eyes, clearer now with a familiar burn behind them, scan the two tributes. Really look. The boy was scrawny, with the hollow chest of a kid who'd done a man's work in the mines too soon. The girl was tiny, her fingers nervously pleating the rough fabric of her skirt. They were weak. Pathetically weak. Weaker than he and his district partners had been three years ago, and that was saying something. A familiar, cold resignation settled in his gut, colder than the liquor.

"Well, just live, kid," he said to the boy, his voice a dry rasp. He paused, letting the hollow words hang. Then he shifted his gaze to the girl. "Or not." He shrugged, a gesture of supreme indifference. "Maybe let them kill you quick. That way, your family gets the grain, gets to keep living. It’s a cleaner choice."

The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the faint hum of the train. The girl’s hopeful flicker died, replaced by a confusion so profound it was almost peaceful. The boy’s jaw worked.

"Haymitch!" Effie’s shout wasn't loud, but it was sharp as a snapped wire, shredding the Capitol performance to ribbons.

He blinked at her, feigning innocence. "What? You said to give advice."

"That is not advice!" She was on her feet, the chair scraping violently against the floor. "Advice is how to stay alive! How to find water, or identify edible plants, or—"

"Well, staying alive didn't end so well for me, did it?" he shot back, his own anger, always simmering just below the numbness, bubbling up. "You saw how my game ended. You were there, cheering in your pretty dress. You know exactly what 'winning' looks like."

Effie’s face went from flushed to pale. Her breath hitched, the carefully controlled rhythm shattered. For three years, she had absorbed his barbs, his drunkenness, his nihilism with a stiff upper lip and a reminder of protocol. But this—this direct attack on her role, here, in front of the tributes—was a line crossed. Without another word, she reached out, her fingers closing like a vice around his wrist. Her grip was surprisingly strong.

"Outside. Now." The words were gritted out between her teeth.

She half-dragged, half-marched him out of the dining car, down the corridor, and into the sanctuary of her private cabin. It was a smaller version of the opulence outside—pastel silks, a vase of eternal Capitol roses, everything ordered and clean. The door hissed shut, locking out the world.

The mask vanished completely. The Effie who turned on him was incandescent with a fury that was three years in the making. "You cannot say that to them!" she seethed, pacing the limited space like a caged bird with clipped wings. "And I cheered for you because I was relived that you are at least, living!"

"Well, you said give advice," he repeated, leaning against the door, crossing his arms, completely resigned from the conversation. A defensive posture. "I gave them the only advice that matters. The only true thing."

"The true thing?" She whirled on him. "The true thing is that they have a chance! However small! And your role is to make it larger, not to snuff it out before they've even left the station!"

"My role," he said, slowly, deliberately, as if explaining to a very small, very stupid child, "is a punishment. For winning, for surviving, for living. My advice is the only kindness I have left to give. A quick death is a mercy. Effie, you know a victor’s life is a curse. What I’m doing is saving them the trouble."

She stopped pacing, her chest heaving. The anger was still there, but it was now mixed with something else—a desperate, frustrated pity. "You are really going to be difficult this year too?" The question was weary, laced with thinned patience.

"I don't think I'm being difficult," he said, and he meant it. From inside the bottle, his logic was pristine, unassailable. "I'm being practical. It's a numbers game, Trinket. Twenty-four go in, only one comes out. Our two have the worst odds on the board. Telling them fairy tales is the cruelest thing we could do."

"Oh, my God!" The exclamation was a burst of pure, un-Capitol-like exasperation. She pointed a trembling finger at the door. "Whatever. Leave! Get out of my cabin, Haymitch. Just leave!"

She didn't just point; she shoved him, a hard, two-handed push against his chest that sent him stumbling back into the corridor. The door slid shut in his face with a soft, definitive click.

He stood there, blinking at the polished wood. What's her problem? The thought drifted through the fog. She knows the score, she’s seen it three times now.

His mind, sluggish and pickled, couldn't reconcile her fury with the obvious, brutal truth. The disconnect was too great. With a mental shrug that was becoming his primary response to the universe, he turned and wandered towards his own quarters, drawn by the siren call of the half-empty bottle he knew was waiting. The mystery of Effie Trinket’s anger was less pressing than the need to drown the image of the girl’s wide, hopeful eyes going blank.

The days that followed established a grim, familiar pattern—the third verse of a song they both hated but knew by heart.

Effie Trinket, having rebuilt her Capitol armor by breakfast the next morning, was a whirlwind of determined, futile activity. She became a relentless mother hen, clucking over the tributes. She cajoled them to eat second and third helpings of rich food that sat heavy in their nervous stomachs.

"You need your strength, darlings! Protein for muscle, carbohydrates for energy!" Haymitch, watching from the doorway of the dining car with a fresh glass in hand, thought it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever seen. They were trying to fatten up ghosts. But he noted, with a distant, clinical part of his mind, that she wasn't mean. There was a genuine, if profoundly misguided, urgency to her efforts. That she believed in the script, and she was following it with terrifying dedication.

He, for his part, played his own role to perfection: the ghost of Victors future. He’d lurch into their training sessions at the Capitol’s Remake Center, leaning against a wall reeking of antiseptic and sweat, and offer his unique brand of commentary. "See that knot? The Careers learn that when they're six. You're dead if you get close enough to needed it." Or, to the girl trying to balance on a beam, "Don't bother. The arena will have trees, or not. I don't know. Either way, you try to climb, and you'll fall and break your neck. Though it's good, a clean death, saves you from the Career."

Each time, it was Effie who erupted. Not the tributes—they just grew quieter, more hollow. But Effie’s composure would shatter. "Must you do that?" she’d hiss, pulling him aside. "They are trying to learn!"

"I'm giving them perspective," he’d slur back.

"You are sucking the hope out of the room!"

"It was false hope. I'm doing them a favor."

When the chariot ride came and went, Haymitch didn't watch. He sat in his dark cabin, a bottle for company, thinking not of the two nameless children in coal mining costumes, but of Louella McCoy, his district sweetheart that died in the 50th chariot ride. Her smile that day, bright and terrified, extinguished forever in the blood-soaked mud of the Cornucopia.

And Effie, to his surprise, didn't berate him for missing the event. She simply gave him a long, unreadable look when they crossed paths later, her eyes holding a sadness that seemed deeper than mere professional disappointment. She was, however, furious he hadn't given their tributes the 'pointers on posture and crowd appeal'.

When he missed their first official day of training, her anger found him in the tribute tower lounge. "They didn't know the rules! They just wandered like lost sheep! And now, they're marked now, Haymitch! Marked as easy targets! And that's on you!"

He’d just shrugged, the gesture his native language. "They were marked the moment their names were called. This just saves time."

And so he drank. It was the solution to, and cause of, every problem. It muted the echoes of Effie’s voice, the sight of the tributes' thinning faces, the memories of his own Games. He drank until the world became a soft, buzzing blur, until the sharp edges of reality were sanded down to nothing. He drank until he stopped leaving his room altogether.

For three days, he was a ghost in the tribute tower. Meals were brought and left untouched outside his door, replaced only by requests for more liquor from the Capitol attendants, who complied with silent, judging efficiency. He existed in a twilight of dribbling bottles, fitful sleep on the floor, and the relentless, screaming silence inside his own head.

On the fourth night, the door to his prison opened without a knock.

The light from the hall sliced into the gloom, outlining a familiar, slender silhouette. "Haymitch?"

A grunt was all he could muster, his face pressed against the cool fabric of the sofa.

She stepped in, the door sighing shut behind her, and perched on the edge of the low table in front of him. The room stank of sweat, despair, and old alcohol. "You drink again," she observed, her voice flat.

"Exactly." The word was thick.

"Too much, Haymitch." A sigh, this one carrying the weight of the train, the tower, the three long years. "You might kill yourself at this rate."

"Maybe that's what I've been meaning to do." It wasn't a threat; it was a statement of fact, weary and resigned.

Another sigh, harder, as if she were expelling poisoned air. "Then what of the kids?"

"I told you, Effie." He pushed himself up to a sitting position, the room tilting nauseatingly. "They're better off dead. It's the only good option from a very bad menu called the Games."

Silence descended, thicker and more suffocating than the room's smell. It was a silence filled with the ghosts of six other children they had escorted to this point, four names already fading from Capitol memory but weighing heavier on them with each passing year.

"I understand your situation," she began, her voice carefully soft.

He barked a laugh, a dry, cracking sound. "What situation?" he mocked, the numbness giving way to a spike of bitter anger. "Did he kill your family? Your sweetheart? The friends you made along the way of the games? Your love? Did he put you in a dome for a week and make you carve up kids you shared bread with? Watching the mutts skinned them alive?" The 'he' was unnamed, but they both heard the ghost of President Snow in the question.

"That's not what I mean."

"Then you don't understand." He stated it as final, irrefutable law.

"Must you be so difficult?" Her own control was fraying, the softness turning brittle.

"I am not difficult. I am clear-eyed. You're the one wearing rainbow-colored glasses in a slaughterhouse." he said, leaning forward, his bloodshot eyes seeking hers in the dim light. Seeing her tigthen jawline and fiery eyes he never seen before, he pressed. "What? What is it, exactly, you're trying to say? Spit it out, Trinket. Use your fancy Capitol words."

She took a visible moment, closing her eyes, drawing a breath that shuddered. She was building herself back up, brick by brick, for another of her patience, for another of his assault. "Those children," she said, gesturing vaguely towards the wall, towards the rooms where the tributes slept—or more likely, lay awake staring at the ceiling. "Like it or not, they have a chance at living. To survive this game."

"And who are you to decide that?" he sneered.

"I am their escort. But you... you are their mentor." She leaned forward now, her intensity matching his. "Look, I have been watching you. Ever since our first meeting, Haymitch. And I have tried. I have tried so hard to understand you. To understand this." Her wave took in his drunken dishevelment, the empty bottles, the whole crushing tragedy of him.

"Oh, I think I should be flattered," he drawled, sinking back into the cushions, adopting a pose of exaggerated nonchalance. "I lost everything, and thank the gods a Capitol girl has taken it upon herself to understand me. What's next, a charity ball in my name?"

Her fists clenched in her lap, the knuckles white. "The boy," she said, forcing her voice to stay level, "has a strong will to live. I see it when he trains, even poorly. And the girl... she talks about her little brother every night. She wants to see him again. Countless times, she says it." Her voice dropped to a near-whisper, aching with a sincerity that was impossible to fake. "I am sure, somewhere in there, you want one of them to come home, too?"

He looked away, his gaze finding a stain on the expensive carpet. "You should've told them the true thing," he mumbled, all fight gone, replaced by a bottomless exhaustion.

"Okay." She bit the word off. "What is exactly the true thing, Haymitch? Enlighten me."

"That they will be dead." He said it to the stain, his voice hollow. "Seriously, Effie. What is so hard for you to understand? You lived in this Capitol bubble your whole life, watching the Games like it's the symphony, and now, all of a sudden, you care? Why? Why these two? Why now?"

"Why?" She shot to her feet, the word a whip-crack. "It should be me asking you why! You know these children! You know their families, their faces! You walk the same streets! You might even know them at some point of your life! And yet you make zero effort! You won't even learn their names!"

"I am helping them by telling them to die!" he roared back, surging to his feet, the confrontation suddenly physical, towering over her.

"That is not helping!"

"Okay!" he shouted, throwing his hands up. "What do you want me to do, huh? Paint a target on their backs with sponsor money? Teach them how to make a snare that might catch a squirrel if they're lucky? It's a circus, Effie! And we're the damned clowns!"

"I just want you to fulfill your promise!" she yelled back, uncowed, her face tipped up to his. "The one you made me a year ago! And the year before that! And the one you slurred on the train after your first Game as mentor! You have to help them as Mags and Wiress helped you! Show them an ounce of attention! Actually try to understand what they can do! Truly, truly, truly help them find a sponsor, any sponsor, and give them a plan for the first ten minutes in that arena that isn't just 'lie down and die'! They need you, Haymitch! Why can't you see that?"

The name of his mentors, the kind women from other districts who had thrown him a lifeline he’d never wanted, hung in the air between them like an accusation. He deflated, the anger whooshing out of him. He stared at her, this ridiculous, stubborn, pastel-haired woman who seemed to believe in a world that did not exist.

"What do you know, Effie?" he asked, his voice now quiet, dead. "My advice is sound, I know it is. Being dead saves their family. It saves them from becoming this. Whatever is this that I am." He gestured at himself, a comprehensive indictment. "No more mothers and  little brothers burned alive in their home. No more girls eating candy and trusting the wrong person, because she loved a wrong person. And no more drunk, broken victors forced to do this year after year. This is my way.. it ends the cycle. Right here."

"So you're just going to submit?" she asked, her voice trembling with a different kind of fury now—disgust. "That is the dumbest plan I heard of you these whole three years, Haymitch. You're really going to let the cruelty win?"

"Cut it off, will you?" he snarled, the deadness igniting into one last, defensive spark. "What does a Capitol girl like you know about cruelty? You package it with a ribbon and call it entertainment!"

To his own suprise, it was the wrong thing to say. The final straw of Effie Trinket's thin patience.

With a speed that belied her elegance, she stepped forward and slapped him, hard. The crack echoed in the plush room, a shockwave of pure, unscripted feeling.

His head snapped to the side. The sting was immediate, bright, and shocking. It cut through the fog, the numbness, even the years of alcoholic padding like a hot knife. He slowly brought a hand to his cheek, his eyes wide, truly seeing her for the first time in days—maybe in years.

"Sorry," she whispered, the word automatic, horrified at her own loss of control. But she didn't back down. Her own hand was curled into a fist at her side.

"But what do you know about care?" Her voice was low, guttural, each word dripping with a pain he hadn't known she was capable of carrying. "At least I try! Okay? I understand I don't know the depth of the cruelty. How could I? I am a ridiculous capitol princess with no brain of my own. But I have spent three years trying to understand. These three years have been a hell for me too, Haymitch. A different hell. A growing hell, and that is because I started to care about what happened to you, and I had to learn what that winning meant!"

He just stared, holding his cheek, the physical pain a bizarre anchor to reality. Her words were knocking the alcohol loose, leaving him raw and exposed.

"So listen to me very carefully, Haymitch Abernathy," she said, deadly calm now, the storm having passed and leaving cold, clear certainty in its wake. "I believe in mess. In tears. In pain. In self-abasement. In loss of self-respect. In nakedness. And I am perfectly fine for you grieves in those." She was quoting something, some piece of Capitol philosophy or drama, but she was weaponizing it, making it real. "But not caring..." she shook her head slowly, her eyes locked on his, "not caring doesn't seem much different from not loving. And I know you care."

She gave a firm, definitive nod, as if agreeing with herself. "I understand you loved your family. I understand you loved your girl. I understand their deaths... unmade you." She chose the word carefully. "But you must understand that now you have a power. A power to stop this, at least for one of them. Perhaps you could help make a victor who comes home. To a family.. who still alive. Maybe even... happy, someday. Is that not a better kind of caring than just simply... given up?"

He blinked, his mind struggling to compute her words, to process the burning on his face and the fire in her eyes.

"Haymitch, if you truly care for them—and I know you do, because beneath your 'advice' is the most lethal practical form of care I've ever seen. In that case... sober up. At least for a few days. If it is not for you then for them."

She held his gaze for one more second, a silent challenge, then turned on her heel. She walked out, closing the door softly behind her, leaving him alone with the echo of the slap, the ghost of her words, and the terrifying, unfamiliar sensation of being enough to feel shame.

The days that follows didn't make him a model mentor. There was no miraculous transformation. But the very following morning, he showed up at the training center. He was pale, shaking, his eyes like burnt holes in a sheet, but he was sober. He stood silently behind the girl from Twelve as she fumbled with a slingshot, and after a long minute, muttered, "Your stance is wrong. You're off-balance. Here." And he adjusted her elbow, his touch surprisingly gentle.

He let Effie drag him to a lunch with a potential sponsor from District 3's electronics sector. He said little, but he didn't drink the wine placed before him. He watched the tributes, and later, over a tense, quiet dinner, he said to the boy, "If the cornucopia is a metal, and if it's a sunny arena, it'll get blistering hot. Don't grab a weapon from the side in the first rush. Wait. Let the Careers burn their hands."

It wasn't much. But it was something. It was a flicker of attention, a nod to strategy, a recognition that they were living, breathing children and not just abstract casualties. Effie watched it all, saying nothing, but her shoulders lost a fraction of their permanent tension.

However, much to Haymitch and Effie's deepest thought, luck was a Capitol resource never allotted to District Twelve. Not yet, maybe. 

The boy, whose name Haymitch finally learned was Barley, died in the bloodbath. He’d taken Haymitch’s advice about the cornucopia, hanging back. But a girl from District 2 threw a spear with such force it went clean through his chest as he turned to run. It was over in seconds.

The girl, Fern, lasted four days. She found water. She used the slingshot to down a strange bird. Haymitch, watching on the screens in the mentor's lounge with a glass of water clenched in his fist, felt a bizarre, painful tug in his chest. She was trying so hard. On the fifth day, a pack of Careers tracked her to a ravine. There, she had nowhere to run. And the cannon soon fired just as the boy from District 1 swung his axe.

Haymitch didn't move at the scene. He just stared at the screen, now showing a panoramic view of a beautiful, deadly forest, as if Fern had never existed.

Then, he sense a presence settled beside him. He didn't need to look to know it was Effie, she smelled of floral perfume and exhaustion he began to remembered. She was still in her commentary-day finery, a bright pink atrocity that felt like a mockery.

For a long minute, they sat in silence, watching the empty arena. Sooner than they predicted, the victor would be Blight from District 7, a hulking boy with a taciturn demeanor.

Finally then, Effie reached out. Her hand, usually so precise in its gestures, hovered for a second before landing on his shoulder. It wasn't a squeeze, just a gentle, steadying weight. Her own jaw was tight, her eyes suspiciously bright with water. She was holding herself together by a thread.

"Perhaps," she said, her voice husky, stripped of all its Capitol glitter, "we must try better next year."

Haymitch looked at her then, really looked. There, he saw the grief she wasn't allowed to show on camera. He saw the determination that had survived yet another crushing failure. He saw the partner, however infuriating, in this endless, hopeless war.

When he didn't trust his voice, he simply nodded, once, a short, sharp dip of his chin. It was an agreement. A pact forged in shared failure and quiet, desperate grief. Deep down, in a part of him that was not yet completely numb, he knew she meant well. And he knew, with a certainty that was more terrifying than any arena, that they would be back here next year.

And they would, against all odds and better judgment, try again.