Chapter Text
I wake up to the feeling of a gentle kiss on my cheek.
“Happy birthday, Haymitch,” Lenore Dove whispers close to my ear. My eyes take a moment to focus since it’s still dark outside. I can see the moon through the window that sits on the opposite wall of her loft. When I turn my head, I notice the flickers of gold in her eyes that are illuminated in the moonlight.
“Thank you,” I whisper back before planting a kiss of my own on her forehead.
Her fingers intertwine with mine as she rests them on my bare chest. “How does seventeen feel so far?” she asks, still maintaining a whispered tone since her uncles are asleep downstairs. Despite both of us being nearly adults now, Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber’s no-overnight-visits rule hasn’t wavered and neither has my ma’s so we’ll catch hell for it later if I’m caught up here.
“Well,” I start, leaning over her so that her back is pressed against the bed. “Being that I’m waking up next to you with the knowledge that Hattie has given me the day off, I’d say it feels pretty great so far.”
She smiles and closes the gap between us with a long kiss.
When she pulls back, her pointer finger trails down the side of my face and her smile falters. I know right away what she’s thinking about: the reaping. It’s the one thing that guarantees I can never celebrate my birthday with as much happiness as everyone else gets to. “It’d feel a whole lot greater if there wasn’t a reaping though,” I add to make sure she knows I can tell what’s on her mind.
She presses her lips together and nods slightly. “Every day would feel a whole lot greater if that were true,” Lenore Dove replies. Her eyes fall to the flint striker on my neck that she gave me for my birthday last year. My sixteenth birthday was marked by a historic Hunger Games since it was the second Quarter Quell. Four kids from each district had their names drawn which led to 47 deaths in the arena. Silka Sharp, a girl from District One, won last year. It’s only fitting that a Career was the winner of such a legendary arena.
I mentally pay tribute to the four that we lost last year: Woodbine Chance, Wyatt Callow, Maysilee Donner, and Louella McCoy. I’m already planning to make a pitstop at their graves before I head to the Justice Building later today to pay my respects. I’ve been missing my sweetheart more than usual the past few days.
“At least it won’t be four this year,” I say, but I regret it instantly. It doesn’t matter how many kids get picked this year. Innocent kids will be dying either way and even just one death is a tragedy.
She shoots her eyes back up to mine. “Four kids or two kids. There’s no difference, Haymitch. We can’t be grateful just because less blood is being spilt. It’s injustice no matter what.”
“I know that,” I reply. “I was just…” I sigh. I don’t know what point I was trying to make. I just wanted to make her feel better, I guess. I lean in to kiss her again before I say, “Only one more year after this one ‘till we’re both free of it forever.”
Lenore Dove nods again, but when her mouth opens then closes I know she wants to mention Sid. But I have to do what I can to not think about the slips of paper that will have my sweet little brother’s name written on them otherwise I’ll spend the next seven years of my life not sleeping a wink.
“We’ll be free,” I whisper in response to her unspoken words.
She’s about to say something else when a noise sounds from downstairs. It’s Clerk Carmine clearing his throat as he walks into the kitchen in search of a midnight snack, most likely. I’m unable to hold back a quiet laugh to which Lenore Dove clamps her hands over my mouth. She’s biting her lip to stop herself from laughing.
She slowly lowers her hands once she’s certain that I’ve gotten a hold of myself. You better go, she mouths, pointing to the window.
I nod and give her one last kiss. “I’ll come by before it starts,” I whisper as quietly as I can manage. I stand up from her bed, slip my clothes on and step towards her window. I turn to see her sitting up in bed, hugging her knees to her chest.
“I love you like all-fire,” she says, resting her chin on top of her knees.
You too, I mouth back before opening up her window and starting my silent descent down the drain pipe.
I’ve only managed to get a few more hours of sleep in my own bed until I’m woken up with another birthday greeting. Except this time it’s shouted in my ear by my little brother.
I immediately open my eyes to find Sid standing at my bedside with a huge grin on his face. “Happy birthday, Haymitch!” he repeats now that I’m able to properly acknowledge him.
“Thanks, buddy,” I groggily reply, using my fists to wipe my eyes.
“Ma wanted me to tell you that breakfast is ready,” Sid continues as he puts his hands on my mattress which he uses as a crutch so he can jump up and down while he talks. “She let you sleep in a little. She said since it’s your birthday and since you got home late last night, you deserved an extra hour of rest.”
I stop wiping my eyes and look up at him. “Ma knows that I got home late?” I thought I had successfully sneaked in without anyone noticing. So much for Lenore Dove and I avoiding trouble.
Sid nods and skips out of the room. “Come eat, Hay!”
I groan and follow after him, slipping my shirt over my head on my way out. “Good morning, Ma.” I greet her with a kiss on her cheek.
“Morning, Haymitch. And happy birthday,” she says while taking a seat at the table. “Were you able to get some sleep?” She raises an eyebrow at me.
I glance between her and Sid who is too distracted by the food on his plate to notice anything. “Yup,” I reply. “I had sweet dreams and everything.”
Ma tilts her head and smiles, but I can detect the hesitation in it. “Good. Happy to hear it.”
The three of us eat breakfast together while talking about all sorts of things, but avoiding the one topic that is on the minds of every person in the district this morning. “Haymitch, I need you to fill the cistern before we leave,” Ma says while collecting our dishes and bringing them to the sink.
I resist a sigh since I was already anticipating that a chore instruction was coming. And with me disobeying one of her rules last night, I know I can’t push Ma's buttons anymore otherwise she’ll have me doing both mine and Sid’s chores combined for a week at least.
“Okay,” is all I say in response.
I’m about two buckets away from being done with filling the cistern when I hear a familiar whistle from behind me. It’s the tune of Lenore Dove’s name song. I recognize it from the very first note.
I turn my head with a smile already plastered to my face as I see Lenore Dove walking up to me with her hands behind her back. I lower the bucket I was holding to the ground as she finishes her tune.
“Hey,” I greet as she stands up on her tip toes to kiss my cheek. “I was going to come find you once I was done with this.”
“I figured as much,” she says. “But I got impatient.” She brings her hands forward to reveal a box wrapped in a silky red fabric. “I couldn’t wait any longer to give you your birthday gift.”
My smile widens and I take hold of the box, inspecting the wrapping. “This fabric sure is something,” I say in fascination while my fingers run across it.
“It’s the same fabric that my red dress was made out of,” she replies. “I like to think that me wearing that dress is a good luck charm. I wear it every reaping day and it’s kept us both safe every year so far.” Her eyes meet mine as she adds quietly, “I thought that maybe if you wore a scrap of it in your jacket pocket then it would double our luck.”
I undo the dove-colored ribbon that surrounds it and slip the red fabric into my pocket. “I’ll make sure to do that.”
She tugs on my arm, pulling me down to sit in the grass with her before I fully take in the gift. I’m just starting to register what it is when Lenore Dove is already giving me her explanation of what its purpose is.
“It’s a whistle that’s meant to replicate the sounds of birds,” she explains. In my hands rests a small wooden pipe with two large holes on either end and two smaller holes on the sides. I hold the whistle up close and see that it’s plated in silver with engravings of ravens etched all throughout it. Just like the raven from Lenore Dove’s name song. It even has a string attached to it so that it can go over my neck and rest right next to my flint striker. “It can imitate different birds depending on how you hold it.” She reaches out a hand then quietly asks, “Can I show you how?”
I smile at her and place it in her hands. She raises the whistle to her lips and puts her thumbs on either end while her index fingers cover the holes on the sides. When she blows into it, a long drawn out whistle sounds. Then when she uncovers one hole at a measured pace, I start to recognize the sound.
“A mockingjay,” I say in awe.
She grins and nods. She blows into the whistle again. This time, both fingers work at different speeds to uncover either of the holes.
“A dove,” I say as my smile widens at the recognition of the other half of her name sake.
Lenore Dove lowers the whistle from her lips. “I’ve taught you pretty well, haven’t I? You recognized those quick.”
I laugh and nod. “That’s all thanks to your teaching abilities, darling.”
Her eyes squint as she smiles, but it fades after a few seconds. “I know it’s not that useful of a gift. I just thought that it’d be something fun to learn and keep your mind off of things. But-”
I lean in and cut her off with a kiss. When I pull back, I rest my forehead on hers while keeping my eyes closed. “It’s perfect. Your gifts always are. Thank you, Lenore Dove.”
She answers me with another kiss. I taste the salt from her tears and I sense her desperation from the way her hands are gripping my hair tightly between her fingers. “I wish we lived in a different world,” I whisper against her lips, knowing that reassurances of everything eventually being okay will just sound hollow and empty. “One without reapings and Hunger Games’ and President Snows.”
Lenore Dove pulls back and looks at me sadly. “Me too. But we don’t. Which means we have to do what we can to make a world without those things become our reality. Right?”
I open my mouth to reply, but I hesitate for just a second too long, causing Lenore Dove to sense my uncertainty.
She closes her eyes and gives her head a small shake. “Sorry. I’m doing it again, aren’t I? You don’t need your birthday to be tainted with any more despair.” She kisses the corner of my mouth, then my cheek, then my jawline. “Were you able to sneak back into your room without any trouble?”
I bite my lip, doing a horrible job at hiding a smile. “I thought so. But my ma sounded real suspicious this morning.”
Lenore Dove throws her head back and groans. “Haymitch!” she chides. “You’re gonna get us grounded again!”
“I’m sorry!” I say through a chuckle. “But… it’s pretty ridiculous that your uncles are still binding you to such strict rules. I mean, you’re almost an adult.”
She rolls her eyes. “Don’t you think I’ve tried telling ‘em that? It doesn’t matter! At least, not to CC anyway. Tam Amber doesn’t care as much.”
I nod along with her words. “Well, my ma makes it sound like her rules are gonna stay in tact until we’re married. So-” I raise my eyebrows at her. “-maybe if we get married once I’m eighteen then all of our problems will go away.”
As Lenore Dove leans in for another kiss, she murmurs, “Oh, all of our problems?”
“Mmhm,” I say against her lips. “All of them.”
After she kisses me, she leans back on her hands, looking out at the mountains. “You know, I don’t believe in that actually. I think it’s crazy to expect every single one of our problems to just disappear once we sign some stupid papers.”
I sit back, using my elbows to prop myself up and lean my head against her arm. “So… you don’t want to marry me then? On principle?” I look up at her and squint because of the sunlight that’s beating down on us.
She turns to me and smiles. “‘Course I do. But I want it to mean what we want it to mean. I don’t want all the-” She waves her hand around in the air as her eyes go back to the mountains. “-typical expectations that old folks put on marriage. That’s how people die unhappy if the disease and hunger doesn’t kill ‘em.”
I nod and follow her gaze to the sight before us. “I want a marriage like my parents. They were real happy before my pa died. I think they would’ve been happy forever if he had lived.”
She lays flat in the grass and I join her before she puts her head on my shoulder while tracing circles against my chest. “I think we’ll be happy forever, Haymitch. Married or not,” she says quietly, then looks up at me, awaiting my reply.
“I think so too,” I answer with my eyes focused on the clouds.
I make my way through the crowd that’s formed in front of the Justice Building until I find Burdock and Blair. Once I do, they grin at me and Burdock says, “Hey, there’s the birthday boy. We were wondering what was taking you so long.”
Blair nudges his chin towards Lenore Dove who has just slipped through the girl’s pen, sending a small wave my way. Sure enough, she’s kept up her tradition of wearing her lucky ruffly apple-red dress. “I’ll bet that’s who was keeping him occupied,” Blair remarks with a snicker.
I elbow him in the side as I scoff, but I can’t deny his statement. He was spot on after all.
Burdock grabs onto my shoulders and gives them a shake. “You were getting some special birthday lovin’, huh?”
I shove him off and say, “So what if I was? It’s not like I was missing anything important over here.”
Blair opens his mouth to say something else when the sound of Panem’s anthem cuts through on the speakers surrounding the crowd.
Gem of Panem,
Mighty city,
I start tuning it out and look to the right of me, trying to sneak a glance at Lenore Dove. I find that her eyes are already meeting mine and I can see the underlying fear in them, though she does her best to hide it. I tap the fabric that’s sticking out of my jacket pocket then point to her matching dress. We’ve doubled our luck, I mouth to her. She smiles, but it just barely seems like it.
When the anthem finally finishes, Drusilla Sickle steps onto the stage. This year she’s wearing a bright green jumpsuit with an assortment of patches scattered all across it, each one representing a different Hunger Games arena. I notice the one towards her left shoulder encompasses a blue butterfly which was a mutt featured in last year’s arena. Sid still runs in the opposite direction every time he sees one because he thinks that there might be some rouge stinging butterflies that escaped from the Capitol.
Drusilla clears her throat before speaking into the microphone on stage, “Ladies first!” She sticks her hand in the bowl that houses the names of the girls. I feel sick to my stomach thinking about the seven slips holding my girl’s name. Compared to many of the other kids who have no choice but to take out tesserae each year, myself included, the odds are in her favor. But that sliver of doubt can’t escape me.
I’m thinking about how Lenore Dove just has two more reapings to get through when Drusilla makes her selection. She unfolds the paper, plasters on a grin, and announces, “Lenore Dove Baird!”
My heart sinks. It plummets into my stomach then it shatters into a million pieces. And every single one of those pieces belongs to Lenore Dove.
I feel Burdock and Blair’s arms encircle mine which must mean that I’m not able to keep myself upright. I can’t quite tell though because every fraction of my body is completely numb now that my heart is no longer in its correct place. I can’t tear my eyes away from the slip of paper in Drusilla’s hands. As if my unwavering stare will somehow stop this from happening.
It isn’t until I hear a loud cry from the outskirts of the square—a cry that I can only assume belonged to one of her uncles—that I finally turn my head in the direction of the girls’ pen. The girls surrounding Lenore Dove have parted enough so that a small path has formed leading towards the stage. Lenore Dove’s head is bowed and I instantly become terrified that she is about to do something. Make a break for it, punch a Peacekeeper, I’m not sure. But I think back to when Woodbine Chance’s name was read last year and how he had tried to take fate into his own hands. He was moments away from being shot in the head after he tried escaping the square. His life was spared only because Drusilla started screaming her head off due to someone jumping on stage when the chaos broke out. That person received the bullet in the head that should have been Woodbine’s.
I would not be able to survive watching Lenore Dove die right in front of me. Then I realize as Lenore Dove finally lifts her head that she is going into the Hunger Games. I know my girl too well to ever assume that she’d try to win. A caged life as victor would be a much more tortuous death for her than anything that awaits her in the arena. So this means that I will be watching her die on television in a few short weeks. As this realization settles in, I hear what sounds like a wounded animal taking its last few breaths.
Then I hear Burdock hurriedly whisper in my ear, “Shh. Quiet, Hay. Don’t make this worse for her.” I am completely numb to any feeling in my body as well as the sounds leaving my mouth apparently.
Lenore Dove has reached the stage now and Drusilla grabs onto her arm with her pointy green nails and pulls her over to the center. She is doing everything in her power to not break down in front of the crowd and the cameras surrounding us all. I, on the other hand, am doing everything in my power to not run up on that stage right after her, pull her away from Drusilla’s claws, and escape with her into the woods so that she is far, far, far away from the Capitol’s cage.
I notice Lenore Dove’s eyes trail across my section until they land on me. Once they do, her face contorts into every grieving expression she can manage. Burdock and Blair’s hold on me tightens when they see Lenore Dove and I’s eyes locked on each other. “Don’t do anything stupid, Haymitch,” Blair warns. Burdock says something of the same effect, but I’m already tuning them out. If I wasn’t so numb I’m certain that I would be able to fight them both off.
I’ve been so focused on Lenore Dove that I haven’t even realized Drusilla has been standing in front of the other bowl with a second slip in her hand. “Miles Connelly!” she calls out.
My eyes begrudgingly break away from Lenore Dove to the front row of my pen. Miles Connelly is Sid’s best friend. And it’s his first year in the reaping.
How is this happening? How has a girl—my girl—with only seven slips and a boy whose name is only on one both been picked? I glance around at the crowd surrounding us and I am suddenly questioning every single person who has ever loved someone that has been reaped. How has our district never had a volunteer? How do people just stand by and let this happen? How do they watch as the ones who make up the pieces of their heart walk onto the stage before us? Nothing about it makes any sense at all.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Miles' older brother who is only a year younger than me start to shake from his cries. He is just standing there, watching as his brother takes his place on the other side of Drusilla. I feel so sick with nausea once I realize that it’s a mirror I’m looking into. Miles’ brother is immobile from his shock just as I was minutes ago. His heart must be in a million pieces, just as mine is. His mind is probably questioning how this is happening, matching the racing thoughts of my own.
Unlike him though, I am finally gaining enough feeling back in my body to push Burdock and Blair away. I’m not able to take Lenore Dove’s place, I know that. But watching her die right in front of me—whether it’s on television or not—is a future I refuse to take any part in.
I stand in the open path right in front of the stage and Peacekeepers immediately take hold of my arms, just like Burdock and Blair were, except they start yanking me back towards the pen. “No!” I shout, fighting them off. “I’m volunteering! Let me go!” Gasps sound from all around me. I try to tune them out so that I don’t hear the cries from Ma and Sid. Their pleas for me not to do this would be the only thing strong enough to stop me and I can’t allow that.
“What is going on?!” Drusilla yells right into the microphone which causes her voice to echo loudly throughout the square.
I give one last shove until the Peacekeepers finally stop dragging me backwards. I face the stage and announce, “I volunteer as tribute!”
It’s not Ma or Sid’s cry I hear, but Lenore Dove’s. “Haymitch, don’t!” She lunges toward the edge of the stage, trying to get to me, but Drusilla grabs her arm and pulls her back, digging her nails into her skin.
“Stay put!” Drusilla hisses. With Lenore Dove’s arm still in her grip, she looks at me and tilts her head. “You’re volunteering in place of Miles Connelly?” I nod. The Peacekeepers push me towards the stairwell that accompanies the stage as Drusilla addresses the crowd, “Well! That's a first for this lousy district! Finally I’ll be given some much deserved screentime!”
The Peacekeepers let me go once I reach the stairs. Miles is waiting for me at the top of the staircase and once I’m close enough to him, I can see that tears are staining his cheeks and, just like his brother, he can’t stop shaking. “Th-thank you, Haymitch,” he stammers.
I pull him into a tight hug, bending my head down so that he can hear me as I whisper, “Tell Sid I’m sorry. Please look out for him for me, okay?” I feel him nod against me then a Peacekeeper tears us apart and drags me up the stairs until I’m fully on the stage.
Lenore Dove’s arm is still in Drusilla’s grip once my eyes finally lay on her. “Haymitch,” she chokes out. On instinct, I quickly step in her direction, but another Peacekeeper intervenes and pulls me by the arm towards the other side of Drusilla. Now that we’re both in our proper places, she can conclude the ceremony.
“What’s your name, boy?” she asks.
“Haymitch Abernathy,” I reply, trying to peer past her so I can keep my eyes on Lenore Dove.
“Haymitch Abernanny!” she says into the microphone.
“Abernathy,” I correct.
“Whatever.” Drusilla carelessly waves her hand in my direction. “Okay!” she says with a clap once she releases her hold on Lenore Dove. “After an exciting turn of events—District Twelve’s first volunteer—we can finally welcome our tributes for the Fifty-First Hunger Games!” No one makes a sound. I know that for the live broadcast, they’ll edit in some applause. They always do. But right now, I take in the sight before me. Every single person, both in the pens and outside of them, is looking at us with pity. It’s not often that lovers go into the Games together.
“And may the odds be ever in your favor!” Drusilla finishes.
My fingers brush over the red fabric in my pocket. The odds were in our favor. Our luck was even doubled.