Work Text:
────────────────
“You got back here quick,” Johanna denotes, a lopsided grin across her face the next time Haymitch returns to Seven. He plans to stay there.
“Well, I took what I could from Three.” He waves her off, having spent months roommating with Beetee before drawing back here. He thinks there's a magnetism to Seven; the endless verde orchards, the pine scent, the lack of blood on greenery soil. Everything about where Johanna lives is irrevocably sacred to him; her presence within it even more so.
That self-satisfied look has existed on a millon faces of hers, and the one she's settled on is rattled by the morphling, and sucked out like a dreg.
“You mean you finished leeching off of your queer little rendezvous. Good, that's good.” Jo hums, pulling him by the sleeve like a petulant child would, trawling him through the house.
Johanna hasn't done anything to the house in particular — it stands in dust as all neglected things do, and she the shining thing poking from the cobwebs.
He rakes his eyes over her coffee table and notices the numerous vials and half-standing syringes which stay like flowers in a vase. He presses his lips into a disapproving line; a crease making itself present against his forehead.
“You've got a supply,” Haymitch tuts, picking up a small bottle still full enough to get a hit out of.
Johanna scoffs, plucking it from his hands and shoving it into one of her pockets. Her appearance is mostly acceptable; cropped pixie, white tank top and cargos a size too big, which drape over her bare feet. Only her tired eyes and sunken cheeks betray her assumed sobriety.
“I get some help from Plutarch. My survival is more beneficial to him than my death, and I guess we both understand that these are the key to that.”
He scoffs dryly. “It'll kill you slow. You could overdose anyday.”
She turns the bottle over in her pocket, tongue poking the inside of her cheek. “It's pathetic for a former addict to preach, man. You're not so far away from me in terms of what you'll do to keep going.”
Haymitch wipes his face with a hand. God, she was fucking difficult. More than ever now, undeniably shrunken under the influence and barely clinging to. “I'm better off than you. I did more drugs than you'd ever dream of in life. The only difference is that I understood the cost of continuing on. You should think about that, Hanna.”
Johanna snorts, kicking a crumpled piece of flannel out of the way. “So, give me a better solution to Snow's mind fucking. How do I reverse the shit that he did to me? Go at it sober? You're off the bottle, but you're still looking for an addiction, too.”
Pegged down by her words, he nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I still am. That's why I want to live here. With you. At least wade out the worst of the cravings and keep myself occupied.”
Johanna raises an eyebrow. “And how do you know that you won't get roped up into my whole thing? You're not exactly a model rehabilitation patient. There's still a junkie in there,” and to enunciate her point, she pokes him in the chest.
“I'd be willing to try and find out.”
She saunters into the kitchen, leaving him alone in the dust. “Don't be a savior, old man.”
────────────────
Johanna doesn't sleep. She runs on fumes and emergency gas, burning out by the weeks.
He sleeps at the foot of her bed in a wicker he made her years ago.
She ropes him onto her mattress, her head curled against his shoulder. They sleep that way most nights, and the light beside her bed stays on. Like every time before, they don't talk about the impact on her.
He keeps his knife against his thigh in a holster, and she keeps her axe sharpened above the bed. Defense is their only way to safeguard.
He gets his hands doing something useful and works with Seven's lumber; enough to replace her old furniture and some of the flooring.
Haymitch doesn't want her thanks. To him, the work is necessary, and her life an investment project. He finds himself lost in the tragedy of her as he's wound up with every sorry kid of before.
Some day while he's cleaning up her porch, Johanna finally thinks she notices.
“Tired yet?” She places a hand on her hip, squinting at the afternoon's spring sun.
“No such thing as being tired for me,” Haymitch shrugs, and she plops herself beside him on a creaking step below.
“Don't lie to me, you coot. I know how much you like to bullshit. Come away from my porch.”
“Can't. I'm fixing the hose system. You might find more enjoyment bathing that way.”
She eyes his ultilty kit, scraping the large mechanical creature away. Now it's just her and the concept of him; an overachiever making up for what he pretends he lacks. If she didn't pity it, Johanna might have held his work ethic in admiration.
“You fucking suck, Haymitch.” Her gaze on him is hard, scrutinizing.
“Coming out here and trying to find something to do, like you haven't dealt with the house once-over is stupid. I'm not housing you just so you can dump your weapy shit onto me. Being fucking aimless, like you don't know what to do, don't know who to help because you've been rendered useless like some decommed vet. Your kids don't fucking like you, so you left. You were oversatisfied by Beetee, so you left. You drabbled in Four a little to act like you were doing Annie a favor by being some sort of senior influence. You won't see Enobaria, and I think you would be doing her a favor by staying away. What's your end goal? Why not kill yourself? Go out with what you've already given to that cause that fucked you?”
She's a stream of consciousness now; weeks of pent up questioning biting him in every place that flesh could break. Johanna understands his helpful streak. Stood by him at her family's funerals and have stood beside him all now — the both of them shattered by the conflict of war.
Shells of people, the both of them. And he was trying to evade it.
Finally; “I don't know. I didn't want to leave you alone.”
Johanna laughs. “Our misery in each other's company. Do you think I'd do the same for you? Keep you with something to walk on back to when you mess up?”
Hunched now, he shrugs.
She crawls over to him, a clawed hand aiming to turn him over. “You have no one to take care of you.”
Haymitch shrugs again, defeated. “...Yeah, I know.”
She squeezes his shoulder, looking over the crown of his mused raven head. “Quit playing house.”
Selfishly, she leaves him outside, thinking of what she'll do for him. In her mind, the answer is a resounding nothing, so long as her suffering exhausts her.
In her hands, she turns the palm of care over, thinking that desertion is a poor fate for a man who tirelessly loves her. So, she stays in the half-threshold.