Chapter Text
Haymitch can hear the faint echo of his voice trying to calm the hysterical Katniss in his arms, despite the threatening feeling of the last of his own sanity leaving his body. It is Annie’s name that they heard last from Boggs’ team who is successfully rescued from the Tribute Center; before communication lines are cut as Snow makes them realize that they are all in his trap.
Nobody knows if they got out of the Capitol before anyone got to them. If they were still alive, if any of them were ever coming back. With the silence that ensues in the room after failing to contact the rescue team again and again, the worst case scenario is to expect.
“Did I lose him… Haymitch, did I lose him tonight?!” Katniss wails Peeta’s name on her mentor’s shoulder, expectedly overwrought. One minute she’s watching them navigate the inside of the Tribute Center, the next the screens are black—dead— perhaps, just as they are. Just as he is.
Haymitch has managed to drag her out of the communication room and into an empty quarter before Plutarch can even think of putting her down with yet another sedative. The last thing Coin would want to see after that is a deranged Mockingjay.
“You don’t know that. We won’t jump to any conclusion here, alright, sweetheart? Those people are trained—”
“And so is Snow’s army!” She breaks free from the hug. “This is all my fault. Snow warned me about this and I didn’t listen… I should have just obeyed him. What was I thinking, I could never stand a chance against him. I can never make this revolution happen with just a fucking bow and arrow!”
“Now both you and I know that is not true...”
“I didn’t listen and now they are dead!”
If it were any other time and circumstance, Haymitch would have just stood there and let her mourn the people she was expecting to be dead. It would be easier than to offer false hope and fake positivity. Easier than to whisper empty assurances. Because when you sneak around a lion’s den and it catches you, surviving is almost impossible.
But it’s different, he supposes, when he finds himself needing a tiny bit of that hope. Looking for something that is close to a sign of survival.
“No one’s dead,” his tone comes out unnaturally low because, Haymitch realizes, he isn’t saying it to Katniss— the words are for him to cling to. He isn’t going to borrow grief from the future. Not this time. Not when there’s at least one person out there who he desperately does not want to be dead. “Katniss, pull yourself together. Calm down, girl…”
“Why are you?” Katniss snaps, her fury at herself suddenly turning toward Haymitch and his lack of concern for the situation. Even though she has long understood that her mentor is never one to involve himself to any sort of attachment with anyone. Decades of watching a pair of boy and girl die under his watch must have taught him that. And while she and Peeta are finally the ones to break the cycle and have been with him the longest, she still never expects him to actually care.
If anything, it’s not because of Peeta why his insouciance is now rubbing her the wrong way.
Effie is there too. The woman who had been with him through all those years of losses was— is— also Snow’s hostage.
“At least the Victors were alive when Boggs found them. We don’t even know about Effie.” Saying the escort’s name out loud guts Katniss in a way she never once anticipated, yet nauseatingly familiar. The thought of losing Effie somehow feels akin to when she realized she was never getting either of her parents back— that it might have only been her father who got blown to pieces that day, but her mother died with him. As if losing Effie will mean losing another mother. Effie Trinket, for all her Capitol beliefs, truly did care about her and Peeta. And Katniss has learned to care about her too, in her own little way. “She… she could be—”
“Stop creating corpses, sweetheart.”
“God, Haymitch! I know you have a special hatred for that woman but Snow could be torturing her right now— if he hadn’t killed her yet— because of her connection to us.”
Something shifts in Haymitch’s eyes then. A fresh but heavier change from when Katniss mentioned Effie’s name for the first time in the conversation. They are full of rage and starting to spill over, threatening to finally show in his face. He hates everything she says, but he doesn’t know how to confront any of it. About him hating Effie. About the possibility of her being dead. Surely, he could have corrected the girl on at least one of her accusations.
“And you don’t think I already know that?” He remarks instead. “You don’t think I know that Snow punishes people from his own backyard worse than the ones outside?”
Whether or not Katniss pays attention to it does not stop her from rebutting, “That’s why showing a little remorse would not hurt!”
“That’s why I’m trying to keep my sanity!” And it’s spilling over now, turning his face red, his voice whole and breaking at the same time. Haymitch scares her off. At least that’s what he gets from the way Katniss takes a step backward. “If I let all these right emotions get the better of me, you and I would not be here. We would be marching our way to the Capitol right now with my knife and your arrow just to rescue the people we want to get out of that hell. Then we would have been dead. So, yes, sweetheart, I should not be calm. And I am not calm. But at least one of us has to stop the other from completely going rogue because that will not help our situation. Or them.”
Katniss does not exactly know what kind of emotion she wants to get from her mentor, but even if she has a list, that won’t even make it there. Haymitch’s rage for the Capitol is unseen this time. It isn’t the kind she is accustomed to, isn’t the one he usually carries. It is too passionate for someone who long has nothing and no one to lose anymore.
Haymitch pushes a hair out of his face, trying to calm himself down from its itch against his skin. From everything that’s been crawling under ever since he stepped foot in this godforsaken district. “And don’t ever talk to me about Effie like that again. You don’t know me. You don’t know what I am willing to do for that woman. And I’m telling you, sweetheart, if she does not arrive here with her ridiculous wigs and outrageous gowns, I’m going to kill Snow myself. Fuck you as the Mockingjay— no offense— I should have done it years ago.”
Perhaps it is the absence of alcohol in his system that is making him incautious of the things he is saying. He has been forced into withdrawal as Thirteen does not just hand anyone a drink— if there is even one to hand seeing how the place restricts almost everything that has a little fun in it— and Haymitch Abernathy, without his vice, is dangerous enough to declare something he has not even fully admitted to himself, let alone to someone else. Not when it’s about Effie Trinket.
Because it’s all about Effie Trinket.
The automated door slides open as Plutarch joins them inside. The Head Gamemaker bears a somewhat grim and somewhat relieved expression. Before either of them can know what to ask, a warlike rush of footsteps fills them in. On the other side of the glass door, a mix of doctors and soldiers are bringing patients in.
But not just ordinary wounded patients.
“Peeta!” Katniss exclaims, catching a glimpse of the blonde head and blue eyes. She immediately heads for the door, but Plutarch remains standing there, intentionally obstructing her from crossing it. “Move! I need to see him!”
He does not move, then Peeta is already out of sight. She balls her hands, ready to attack, when she is intercepted by two feminine voices shrieking their way in— one with a long red head, and one without so much as a hair strand. Skinny and bruised, but surely the Capitol took more than just their weight. Katniss recognizes the former to be Annie Cresta, the love of Finnick’s life; but she has to use the voice as a guide to confirm that the latter is Johanna Mason.
They shaved her head off.
And then there comes a fourth bed. A fourth patient. Unlike the first three who are very much conscious, this one is still in the bed. Katniss can only see the right side of the face which has small caramel curls slightly covering the cheek. She is starting to frown, confused as to who that is, when she peripherally sees Haymitch step closer with urgency.
“Effie…”
“They all got out in time,” Plutarch says. By all, it means the rescue team too, but Katniss ignores that as her attention remains on the woman Haymitch identifies as Effie, trying to figure out how is she the maniacally upbeat woman she once knew. It is not until she is hidden away somewhere that she notices Haymitch shifting under his feet in desire to leave the room, and if Plutarch does not move an inch away from the door, Katniss is sure he will beat the hell out of him. “But you can’t see them yet. The President ordered to have them treated first, make sure they’re stable, and that they’re still… let’s say, themselves.”
The two of them go rigid hearing the latter, “What does that mean?”
“The rescue team reported that it was odd they were let go without any fight, without any gun shooting at them. If we didn’t make an effort to go to the Tribute Center, Snow could have delivered the hostages at the front door of Thirteen. And we know he wouldn’t give the rebels anything that did not have a bomb in it.”
“You believe they were turned into weapons against us?” Haymitch asks. “How does that even work?”
“The Capitol can be very creative. They have all the most advanced technology and science, after all. President Coin just wants to do preventive measures to make sure we will not be put in danger.”
Katniss suddenly remembers the eyes of all the dead tributes on those mutts. “Are you saying there is a possibility they have been turned into mutts?” She shivers at mentioning it. She does not even want to imagine how the Capitol can do that to actual, alive human beings.
“We are counting all the possibilities, although we don’t believe Snow had all the time with the four of them,” the Head Gamemaker says quite confidently. “There could be at least one. One that would very much hurt the Mockingjay.”
True enough, that day did not end without Peeta almost choking Katniss to death. Later they found out that his memories of her were altered with the use of tracker jacker venom, the reason he now sees her as someone dangerous— someone on a mission to kill him.
Katniss does not so much set foot in his room again after that incident. Haymitch has told her that it will not be in both of their best interest to see each other while he is in that state, so she is keeping her distance while the doctors are figuring out how to get his right memory of her back. And because she doesn’t want to give her mentor a hard time when he, too, is barely holding himself together.
Haymitch doesn’t think there will be another layer to his rock bottom, but there is. It’s the small, sterile room where there is nothing but the persistent beeping noise of the monitor— the only sign of life of the woman tethered to it.
Effie hasn’t opened her eyes since she came in Thirteen— which is two days ago— and it’s starting to worry him more than when she was out there in the Capitol. He has no idea about the extent of what she went through, and he isn’t sure he would like to know, but some evidence of it is on the length of both of his arms where spots of purple-blue discoloration are dominating her pale skin. Below her right elbow, Haymitch can make out just a handprint— still red from whoever grabbed it with such intensity. He’s been seething at it, at some peacekeeper who inflicted that pain on her.
But then, it is the kindest violence her body endured. It looks nothing like the ones on her back— the lacerations, the skin tears, the burns. He remembers Asterid using an infinite amount of pads trying to clean them, and yet some are still too fresh to keep bleeding. He doesn’t even want to imagine how they will feel once she gains consciousness.
If she regains it.
“Look,” Haymitch whispers his first word to her with roughness in his throat, not used to facing the most chatty person he knows and meeting silence. “I’m planning on killing Snow myself, and if you don’t wake up to talk some sense to me, I’m really going to do it. No one else will be able to stop me.”
He stares at her face which is miraculously left unscathed, except for the hollowness in her cheeks. Effie had always been careful about the weight she put on herself, but it’s obvious that her thinness this time is not because she is being proper about it. She looks starved. A day away from looking like one of their own in District 12.
When that becomes too much to look at, his eyes trail her emaciated arm down to her bony hand, wanting so badly to feel its warmth against his. To feel its comfort and calm his demons. You are not allowed to die on me, Trinket. You can’t die on me.
“Haymitch,” he is quick to retreat from acting on his impulse upon hearing Katniss’ raspy voice. “I brought you breakfast, figured you wouldn’t join us again. At least eat something.”
Haymitch faces her and immediately feels bad at the bruises around her neck where Peeta tried to choke her. She should be resting herself but it’s probably more depressing for her to be locked up in a room, so he doesn’t give any lectures. He accepts the tray she is holding out to him, says his thanks, then puts it away. It’s another meal that’s about to be forgotten because even his stomach is already full of quiet fears. Though he appreciates the girl’s thoughtfulness despite her own hurt.
“How’s your boy?”
“Still a mutt. How’s your Princess?”
“Another day of looking like a corpse.”
Katniss manages a smile at this laughable exchange. Effie would have hated hearing that. “Hasn’t she woken up yet?”
“Well, I thought I saw her finger move last night, but that was it. Either the medicine they have been injecting on her was too strong to keep her asleep or they have been actually poisoning her so she won’t wake up again.”
“Maybe you need to kiss her to wake her up,” she jests and is about to chuckle when Haymitch shuts her up with a dagger look. Yet he makes no more attempts to be clever around it and Katniss understands that he’s tired… or that he simply does not care about what anyone thinks anymore. Her eyes move past her mentor and refocuses on Effie. At the clarity of her head and being this up close to the Escort, she realizes how much makeup and wigs were not needed. Effie has a perfect symmetrical face that will be a head turner even if bare— although, of course, Katniss is painfully unsure which part had been surgically altered. “Well, all those golden wigs made it easy to expect a blonde woman under them.”
Haymitch sports a small smile, “Yeah, that’s her.” He replies as if he is introducing a new woman Katniss hasn’t met before. As if the one before today has been a dupe— an imposter of the woman lying in the bed— and only him can tell when the real her appears. “I gotta do something about covering it though. She would freak out if she knew people saw her with her real hair.”
“Why, she looks gorgeous with it.”
“She never believes so. No matter how many times you tell her.” And then Katniss briefly wonders how many times he has told her the same thing. That she is gorgeous without all the makeup and wigs. That she is better without any of them.
That he is willing to do just about anything for her.
“I’m sorry,” she starts. “About what I said before. About you not caring about Effie.”
“That was not what you said. You said I hated her.” That is true and Katniss is starting another apology for that when Haymitch continues. “And maybe I did. I hated that she’s a Capitol, that she did what she had to do in the games. But, like you said, it’s a special kind of hate that somehow kept her safe.”
All that being a dick around her, and her being snappy at him all the time must have been half for a show. And to their credit, it worked for her, for Peeta, and for anybody who was watching. It’s just that Katniss knows the show wasn’t for them. She knows, more than anyone else, there is only one person to impress.
A victor and an escort. A capitol and a district twelve. There was no way Snow wouldn’t know even if they put on a big act. Even if they speak in complicated codes. He must have known. At some point, Snow did, because he knew exactly who to get to remind the victor of the kind of pain he once endured and has since tried to numb himself from.
Looking at Haymitch looking at the escort like he is willing to trade his life for hers is when Katniss realizes that had he been the one to go to the arena instead of Peeta, it would be Effie’s voice that the Jabberjay would mimic to lure him to his death. The reason he had stayed this long was because he found someone worth staying for. And seeing the life of that very reason hanging by a thread might have just been his last straw.
“But it wasn't enough still, was it? Does she…” Katniss clears her throat, finding her voice from where it hurts less. “Does she even know about this? About the rebellion?”
Haymitch’s eyes that have been staring at Effie’s unconscious figure lest she will disappear if he looks away for more than five seconds, are suddenly on the floor, his head hanging low. “She… she…” He wants to say that she wouldn’t have come with them even if she knew about it, but he has no way of knowing that for sure. Not when he didn’t allow her to make that decision herself.
“You left her to be dead. Just like Peeta,” Katniss is unkind with her words and how she delivers it. The truth always presents itself like that.
“That’s not the same thing!”
“Right, because at least you attempted to take Peeta from the arena. You left Effie completely in the dark. She didn’t even know what she was getting tortured for.”
“And it’s been eating away at me, okay!?” He heaved a deep breath, trying to make a room for some air before shame completely takes over and kills him. “I think about it every day… about how confused she must be while she was being pressed for information she didn’t have. It’s my fault for not thinking it through but—”
“Haymitch…” Katniss’ voice softens when she notices something.
“I thought leaving her innocent to all of this would at least spare her, that she would be given a chance to prove that she’s not a conspirator,” he continues wallowing in his guilt, unable to look at Effie now. He doesn’t think he deserves so. “After all, she’s still one of them—”
“Haymitch…”
“I thought Snow would at least consider the fact that the rebels wouldn’t reveal something this big to someone whose loyalty was very much to the Capitol. I didn’t tell her because I didn’t want her to be part of the rebellion. I didn’t want to risk her to it—”
“‘Haymitch!”
“What!?” He finally snaps, whipping his head towards the girl and training her with a murderous glare for the persistent interruption. There is no point, though, as Katniss isn’t looking directly at him. With both of them annoyed at each other but not saying anything, Haymitch follows her line of sight.
And his heart starts racing.
Behind him, Effie’s eyes have opened. Their blue irises staring straight at the ceiling, blinking. Once. Twice. Before they start wandering around the room, squinting, confused and curious at first. Adjusting to the flood of lights that welcome her and getting comforted by it after spending a long time in complete darkness.
Then she spots Katniss standing by the foot of the bed. She’s not alone anymore.
The girl smiles nervously at her. After what happened with Peeta, who knows if they mess up the Escort's memory, too. “Effie, hi.” There is a hint of recognition in her eyes, albeit the rest of her body is unresponsive to do more than just that. An obvious relief given by the first familiar face she sees after weeks of masked, brutal peacekeepers. This consoles Katniss, making her feel less pathetic. “It’s okay. You’re in a safe place now.”
She holds Effie’s stares and does not look away until she must have felt wrong about it, too— to have her attention only to the girl when there’s a third person in the room with them. Effie gulps before the blue of her rheumy eyes move to the side where they finally focus on the man she tries to pretend isn’t there.
Haymitch’s breath hitches now that he’s staring straight into her eyes. Gone is the relief that was just there a few seconds ago. Whatever that slight crease on her forehead she manages at him, he cannot quite read. Sadness? Fear? Resentment? Something she surely has the right to feel towards him. Something that overwhelms her and simultaneously turns her once even breathing into a heavier one. Effie’s chest starts rising and falling in labored paces, almost as if she cannot catch enough air to supply her lungs. And it manifests on her bedside monitor with its erratic beeping.
Haymitch and Katniss are taken aback by the sudden fluctuation of lines that are her heart rate. “W-What’s going on? She is awake—” He is certain he only takes his eyes off her for a second, and yet somehow something terrible still materializes, because when Haymitch looks at her again he’s only able to catch her eyes half-open, a tear falling on the side, before they completely shut. And then she's unmoving. “No, no, no, no… Effie, wake up. Effie!”
Katniss runs to call the medical team and before it sinks into Haymitch, there’s already a crowd in the room and he is being pushed out of it, “Haymitch, you need to leave,” Plutarch’s voice is just below the irregular noise of the monitor.
“She can’t die, Plutarch. She can’t… I can’t lose her, too.”
“They will do their job but we need to let them. You can’t be here!” The brute force of a couple more arms successfully ejects him from the area. A nurse is quick to draw the curtains, leaving them with nothing but the indistinct voices and the unrelenting beeping, clicking, humming of machines. The most frequent one is the high-pitched charge that can deliver shock.
“Shit!” Haymitch grasps his own hair using both of his hands with tautness that teeters between hurting himself and getting some strength so as to not completely collapse to his knees. It’s taking everything in him not to scream and cry curses of anger, regret, pain. Plutarch looks at Katniss who wishes she has some explanation to offer but even she is at a loss for words. Everything happened so fast. “She was fine… She woke up and she was breathing fine when you were talking to her. Then she looked at me…”
Katniss is shaking her head at what he is suggesting, “Haymitch, no. You need to calm down.” She gets a feeling that she will be echoing everything he said to her two days ago. All that about pulling yourself together. About not creating corpses because there is none.
“Did I kill her?”
Yet.
The answer may just be in the sharp, monotonic sound that follows.