Work Text:
The memorial book grows fuller by the day. Even I’m surprised at how quickly it fills up with names and illustrations and stories. Peeta has been a great help with it, and even though Haymitch hasn’t contributed, he comes by to sit with us sometimes while we work on it, so I’m not surprised when I enter the living room and find him and Peeta flipping through the newest pages.
“It’s spelled with a ‘U’,” Haymitch says, peering down at a recent addition.
I go over to the table where the book is displayed to try and understand what he’s talking about, and I frown when I see the page it’s open to: Berdock Everdeen.
“No, it’s not,” I say with a rush of defensiveness before I’ve even had time to consider if he’s right.
Haymitch shrugs. “Your call, sweetheart. But it was B-U-R-D-O-C-K in school.”
That brings me up short. I’ve never really considered it before, but Haymitch has to be about the same age as my father was. They must have been in school together. And I was only eleven when my father died, and I never called him by his first name. I never had a reason to write it out before now.
After a moment, I nod and pick up the pencil, carefully erasing the “E” and correcting it with a “U” so the page reads Burdock Everdeen. It looks right.
“Were you classmates?” Peeta asks Haymitch, apparently coming to the same conclusion as I had.
“We were friends,” Haymitch says. He reaches for the bottle on the table beside him, finds it empty, and sets it back down.
“You… You were?” I say, shocked. Then I blurt out something stupid. “I didn’t know you had friends.”
To my relief, Haymitch laughs, a dry chuckle halfway to a cough. Peeta looks amused too, but any mirth quickly vanishes as Haymitch says, “We were friends before the Games. I had friends before the Games.”
I feel awful for saying that. Of course he did. Before the Capitol got ahold of him, Haymitch Abernathy had a mother, a little brother, and a girl he loved. Of course he had friends once.
“I’m sorry,” I say even though it feels woefully inadequate.
“What for?” he says in a tone that implies I’m being ridiculous.
“Bringing up bad memories,” I say, crossing my arms.
He smiles ironically. “Isn’t that what your book is for?”
Peeta shakes his head. “Not just the bad memories, Haymitch. All of them. The ones we can’t afford to forget.”
Haymitch doesn’t answer. He just runs his finger down my father’s page in the book as if searching for something. “S’pose I should tell you about the grave then,” he says after a moment.
I don’t follow. Peeta must not either because he says, “Whose grave?”
“Lenore Dove’s,” he says. “My girl. My love.”
My breath catches. I don’t know what she has to do with my father, but I don’t dare interrupt. I just wait for Haymitch to gather his thoughts together.
“Burdock showed me to her grave when I couldn’t find her. For weeks and weeks, I searched the woods, and then here he comes, out of the mist with a brace of wild turkey at his side, and he tells me, ‘If you want her, come on,’ so I followed him,” Haymitch says. His voice is vague and distant, almost like he’s describing a dream. “He took me deep, deep into the words, to a graveyard hidden in a grove, and there she was. I owe him for that.”
This raises a lot of questions, all of them terrible, like how did she die? Why couldn’t you find her? How did my father know her? Who else was buried there? But I don’t ask any of them. Haymitch will tell us when he’s ready, and if he doesn’t, that’s his right.
Instead I say, “Do you want to write that?” and gesture at the book with my pencil.
He shakes his head. “It’s your book, and your father. You do it. You put what you want in it.”
So I write down the story as best I know how, the image of my father appearing out of the mists with a brace of wild turkey and his bow and beckoning Haymitch to follow him, to reunite with his love at the graveyard.
The next day, Haymitch tells us about Maysilee Donner, who owned my mockingjay pin, who was Haymitch’s ally in the arena, who collected jewelry, and who never gave in to the Capitol. I admire her bravery. I’m not sure I would have dared to kill a Gamemaker if I had encountered one during my first time in the arena. I wish Madge had gotten to meet her.
Peeta draws up a likeness based on Merrilee Donner, and Haymitch adds a few details, like the necklaces around her neck, and nods his approval once it’s finished.
This time, Peeta dares to do what I can’t and asks Haymitch if there’s anyone else from his Games that he wants to add, and that’s how Woodbine Chance, Wyatt Callow, and Louella McCoy end up in the book. Before I can ask about Woodbine Chance, Haymitch is already explaining, calmly relaying what happens to tributes who try to dodge the Reaping.
My hand flies up over my mouth, imagining how it would feel to think you had made it through the Reaping that year, only for a tribute to be shot in front of you and you forced to take their place. I imagine Peeta facing down a Peacekeeper, protecting someone grieving their child, and I can see myself intervening. Or even worse, I can see Peeta doing it to protect me and being taken away from me, sent off to the Games to die.
While I’m drowning in my imagination, Peeta says, “Sounds like your girl was very brave and kind. You must have loved her a lot.”
“Like all-fire,” Haymitch says hoarsely.
The phrase sounds familiar and old-fashioned, like something my father would say.
Peeta sharpens a piece of charcoal and opens a fresh page in his sketchbook. “Tell me what they looked like.”
Haymitch does. He describes Woodbine Chance and Wyatt Callow to the best of his memory though he tells us that he might be able to dig up some photos if he puts his mind to it. He actually smiles when he goes to describe Louella.
“She looked a lot like Katniss when she was little. Tough and smart, with her black hair in two braids. She was only thirteen. I knew her from birth.”
My memory of Louella from the Quarter Quell recap is hazy, but the comparison touches me anyway. Peeta sketches, and Haymitch tells stories, and I listen and watch.
A few days later, Peeta and I are spending an evening working on the memorial book by ourselves when we hear the front door open and unsteady footsteps trod inside. I know who it is by his staggering gait, but it still takes me by surprise when Haymitch stumbles up to us, bottle of white liquor in hand, and says, “My brother Sid loved the stars.”
Peeta recovers first, and he turns the book open to a new page. “Sid Abernathy?” he asks.
Haymitch nods, and Peeta writes it carefully across the top of the page. As he does, Haymitch thrusts a old piece of paper at me, and I catch it on instinct.
It’s a singed photograph of a boy who can’t have been older than ten. He was the spitting image of Haymitch, only impossibly young and innocent in a way that I can’t imagine Haymitch ever looking. His smile is too wide and sweet, and his eyes are more brown than Seam-gray, so I know I’m looking at his brother.
“I have a photo,” Haymitch says unnecessarily. “It was the only one that survived the fire.”
I clutch the photo gingerly, noticing the edge that has been licked by flame. Peeta helps me paste in the photo beneath Sid’s name, and I say, “The fire?”
“Maybe I should start at the beginning,” Haymitch says. He throws himself into one of our chairs and tips back his bottle.
“If you want to,” Peeta says. “You don’t have to.”
“Sid has to be in the book,” Haymitch says. “And if Sid has to be in the book, then so does my ma. And if I tell you about Sid and my ma and you already know about Maysilee and Louella and Wyatt, I might as well tell you everything. Just so I’m not repeating myself.”
I curl up on the couch with my feet in Peeta’s lap, and I look at Haymitch, listening.
Haymitch starts the story on Reaping Day which I’m dismayed to learn is his birthday. He tells us about his brother waking him up at dawn, and his mother, Willamae, who was the hardest-working woman in District 12 and made apple stack cake for New Year’s, asking him to fill the cistern on the day of his Games. He tells us how he wanted to spend the day with Lenore Dove, how my father introduced them, and how the Reaping ruined everything. He recaps the murder of Woodbine Chance and his rescue of Lenore Dove, but this time, he tells us about his last moments with Sid and his mother, how he thought he would never see them again, and how he was right, but not for the reasons that he thought.
“I never thought there was a chance in hell that I would make it out of the Games, not with forty-seven other tributes,” he says.
My heart breaks for him. I remember going into my own Quarter Quell, feeling much the same way. He tells us about Maysilee’s fight with the escort and Wyatt’s incredible skill with probabilities, but he pauses when he gets to the chariots.
“A lot of what you saw in the recap is inaccurate,” he says. He closes his eyes and takes a long drink of liquor. “What really happened was even worse.”
Peeta nods. His hand rests on my ankle, and he squeezes it. I’m not sure if he’s comforting me or himself.
“I thought so,” Peeta says. “It wasn’t just the stunt with the forcefield, was it?”
I glance at Peeta, surprised. I knew the Games always went through a heavy edit, but Peeta must have picked up something that I didn’t, because I hadn’t questioned that what I saw in the tape of the 50th Hunger Games was accurate.
“No, it wasn’t,” Haymitch says. He looks unspeakably bitter for a moment. “That was just the cherry on top. I was already doomed by that point.”
“Why were you really so intent on heading north?” Peeta asks.
“I’ll get to that,” Haymitch says. “First, I have to tell you how Louella McCoy died.”
My eyes feel watery and painful as Haymitch narrates the chariot ride and running with Louella’s body. The events are long over and done with, and Snow is dead, but I still feel afraid for him when he describes laying her at Snow’s feet and applauding. Peeta’s hand on my ankle clenches tight.
We both gasp when he tells us about Lou Lou, and I feel sick to my stomach. The story does nothing to improve my opinion of Plutarch Heavensbee.
He tells us about training and Maysilee’s talent with the tokens, and I make a note of it in Peeta’s sketchbook because I want to add it to her page in the book, but mostly, I sit and I listen, and I try not to cry, because this isn’t my story, and it isn’t about me, and what Haymitch needs is my attention, not my tears. But it’s hard to hear about his phone call with Lenore Dove. His voice is so low and quiet as he recounts his promise to always be with her, that he would wait for her in the Meadow, and that he loved her like all-fire. The words sound as though he has repeated them to himself many times.
I maintain my stoicism through the interviews and the entry into the arena even when he tells us how Wyatt died protecting Lou Lou and how Lou Lou inhaled poison and Haymitch was forced to remove her pump, but when he gets to Ampert and the squirrels, I can’t handle it. I start sniffling and crying, and I can’t do anything to stop it.
I feel like everything makes me cry these days, even when it has no right to. Dr. Aurelius say it’s a good thing, that I need to cry in order to heal, but I don’t believe him. It just makes me feel selfish. Haymitch is the one reliving the worst days of his life, so why should I get to cry about it?
To make matters worse, he notices immediately, probably because Peeta lets out a quiet, “Oh, Katniss,” and pulls me into his arms. His eyes are wet too, but he’s not struggling to draw breath like I am.
Haymitch pauses his story and gets up from his chair, somewhat unsteadily. He comes to kneel in front of me where I sit on the couch in Peeta’s embrace. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
He smells like alcohol, but by now, I find it strangely comforting.
I try to stop my tears enough to speak, but I fail miserably, the endearment bringing on a fresh wave of sobs.
“I’m just… I’m just so sorry, Haymitch,” I sniffle. “That sounds so… so awful…”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to cry over an old man,” he says.
This makes me cry harder, and I slide from Peeta’s arms to the floor with my arms out in invitation. Haymitch understands, and he embraces me instantly, wrapping his arms around my fragile frame and tucking my head against his shoulder. I shudder and clutch him to me, like I’m scared he’s going to disappear.
Peeta gives a watery chuckle. “You’re, what, forty-five?”
“Not for a few more months,” Haymitch says. I’m holding him so tightly I can feel the rumble of his voice.
Peeta scoffs. “Forty-four is barely… barely middle-aged.” His voice trembles.
I feel him move from his seat on the couch and then his arms wrap around me from behind, sandwiching me between him and Haymitch, and I draw a shaky breath and let it out slowly.
“Not an old man,” I agree with Peeta in a small voice, rough from crying.
Peeta and Haymitch hold me for a few more moments, and I make no move to disentangle myself from them. I squeeze Haymitch especially tight, unable to stop imagining the sixteen year old I saw from the tape surrounded by death.
He seems to know what I’m thinking like he somehow always does. “You know, I don’t have to finish the story, sweetheart,” he says, stroking the back of my head.
I shake my head. “No, no, I want to hear it,” I insist.
“Please continue,” Peeta says softly, his hands on my hips and his face pressed against my shoulder. “Someone else should know. So we can carry on their memories.”
Haymitch lets me go, but the three of us stay sitting on the floor, me leaning against Peeta and Haymitch sitting near enough to touch. I’m surprised to see a tear on his face. He hadn’t let it show in his voice at all, but his eyes are wet as he continues speaking.
The story doesn’t get any less gruesome from there, but I think I’ve cried myself out for the moment. I realize Haymitch is even braver than I’ve given him credit for as he recounts his alliance with Maysilee and making it to the generator. I know how she dies—I saw it in the recap—but it’s still terrible to listen to Haymitch tell it.
“I never should have let her leave my side. You know, one time, Effie turned up for the Reaping covered in pink feathers, and I almost hit her,” he says. “I thought she was one of those damn birds.”
“Once, a kid came into the bakery holding a stuffed wolf toy with a missing eye while I was visiting,” Peeta says. “I hid in the backroom until he was gone.”
Peeta and Haymitch share an ironic laugh.
Haymitch tells the story quickly now as if he can outrun it if he speaks fast enough. Wellie’s death is even worse than I remember. Did they even show it in the recap? I can’t remember, and I feel awful. Every single one of these deaths is a tragedy, and yet, they blur together.
“You know what happens with Silka,” Haymitch says. “What you don’t know… what they cut out… was what happened right after.”
My eyes are wide as he explains the explosive he put together from a handful of tokens, how he was willing to die to stop the Capitol from getting the last laugh, and it’s terrible of me, but I’m glad it didn’t work. Haymitch is too important to die young, even in such a spectacular way. Peeta and I need him too much.
Still, I know things only got worse for Haymitch after he was crowned victor, and I reach out to take his hand. He holds my hand with his right and drinks from his bottle with the left.
“What happened next…” he murmurs. “My memory gets hazy, but it must have been the lab.”
“They didn’t take you to a hospital?” I burst out, horrified.
“It was a hospital of sorts. I think it was part of the laboratory where they made all the mutts and maybe some Avoxes too. I’ll spare you the gory details, but they stitched me back together. Still have the scar. This was before skin polishes, I think,” Haymitch says. “Or maybe Snow just wanted me to keep the reminder. He was a sick, twisted bastard like that, wasn’t he?”
“He sure was,” Peeta says.
“At least he’s finally dead,” I say.
“I’ll drink to that,” Haymitch says, and he does.
Haymitch tells us about being kept in the apartment by himself, about being threatened by Snow and paraded around the Capitol, about being shipped back to District 12 alongside his friends’ coffins.
“I just wanted to see my ma and Sid again, but I could tell something wasn’t right as I got nearer to my house.”
“You don’t have to tell us this part,” Peeta says. “We can guess.”
I nod. I already know with sickening certainty what Haymitch found when he arrived back home. It was the only one that survived the fire.
But Haymitch shakes his head. “No, no, you need to know. Burdock was there. Asterid was there. You need to know…”
“Okay,” I whisper, still holding tight to his hand.
His voice is choked, and he clutches his bottle tight as he tells us about the fire, about running to save his family but being held back from the flames by my father and his friend, and about my mother with the sleeping syrup. It seems my parents saved Haymitch, and in doing so, they saved me. I should call her…
Haymitch has been doing an admirable job of remaining coherent up to this point, even when I can tell he’s having a hard time getting his thoughts in order and his words out, but when he tells us about going to meet Lenore Dove in the Meadow, he begins to break down. His sentences stop making sense, and he groans like a man in pain, clutching his head.
All we can get out of him is “It was the gumdrops,” but it’s enough.
“From the books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—” he mumbles. “For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
I exchange a nervous glance with Peeta who says, in a very gentle voice, “Is that a poem, Haymitch?”
He nods and stares up at the ceiling, slumping over to lie flat on his back. “Her poem. My love’s poem. I’m sorry it took me so long, my love, but I did it. I stopped the sun from rising.”
I don’t have the faintest idea what he means, but I know he’s not talking to us. I keep ahold of his hand and stroke it gently with my thumb. He squeezes my hand tight.
“She says I can’t go home to her yet. I have to look out for you. You and Peeta. My family.”
My throat becomes tight with tears. I guess I haven’t cried them all out.
“Yes, that’s right,” I manage to say. “Your family.”
I look to Peeta for help, and he gets up from the floor, squeezing my shoulder, and walks over to Haymitch to kneel by his head.
“Let’s get you home and to bed, old man,” he teases. “I think you’ve had enough to drink.”
“Only forty-four,” Haymitch slurs. Still holding my hand, he abandons the bottle to grab Peeta’s face fondly. “This is my home.”
Peeta smiles at him. “Maybe so, but it’s not where your bed is.”
“I can sleep on the floor. ‘S fine. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“At least sleep on the couch,” I say.
“Not done with my story,” he says, pouting.
“Then finish it,” I tell him as Peeta and I wrestle him into a sitting position and prop him up against the armchair.
“Need to tell you about her geese. She had a flock, and they adored her. They used to graze in the Meadow. She was the cleverest and bravest. They arrested her twice for it. Three times counting the final time. She made me promise to stop the sun from rising on another reaping, and we did it. You two did it. The rare and radiant Lenore. I met her at an apple tree. Geese mate for life,” he says. “My love for life.”
“That’s beautiful, Haymitch,” I say. I mean it. I don’t understand all of what he said, but what I do understand is beautiful.
“You must miss her,” Peeta says.
“She’s still here. But I do,” he says. “I’ll see her again though. That’s the end of my story. The end is when I’ll see Lenore Dove again.”
“I’ll bet she’s looking forward to that,” I say.
Peeta and I manage to pull him up and situate him on the couch.
“Thank you,” he says. “For listening.”
I just shake my head and smooth the gray-streaked curls away from his forehead.
“I’m going to get a glass of water,” Peeta says, and I nod appreciatively.
“Did you get enough for your book?” Haymitch asks.
“Plenty,” I tell him.
“That’s good. That’s good. I’ll try to dig up… some more photographs,” he says.
“Thank you.”
“Of course, sweetheart, of course,” he says, blinking slowly. I hope he doesn’t fall asleep before Peeta can get some water in him. He’ll be a pain and a half to deal with tomorrow if he does.
“I hope you didn’t tell us all that because you felt pressured,” I say.
“When have I ever… let you push me around…” he says, voice heavy with sleep. “I wanted you two to know. My only family left.”
“There could be more someday,” I say without thinking.
Even drunk off his ass, Haymitch somehow understands what I mean before even I do.
“I don’t think I’ll live to see that,” he says.
I grip his shoulders. “Yes, you will,” I tell him, leaving no room for argument.
“You’re… you’re as bad as Lenore Dove,” he mumbles.
Peeta comes back with the water, and we manage to get him to drink about half of it before he starts nodding off.
By mutual agreement, we decide not to try and lug him back to his house. Instead, we leave the water and a new pill that the factories have started manufacturing to ease headaches and hangovers nearby, and we pull an old quilt over him in case it gets cold. We think he’ll be okay until morning. He’s been in much worse shape.
I press a kiss to his forehead, and then I head to my bedroom. Peeta follows me. He spends most of his nights with me, and it helps both our nightmares. With Haymitch in the living room, and Buttercup asleep on the rug, I feel as safe as I can.
“I can’t believe he used to be friends with my father,” I say.
“I can’t believe he survived the Games and the explosions and Snow,” Peeta says.
We climb in bed together, and I bury myself in his chest.
“He has more lives than Buttercup,” I say, trying to be lighthearted.
“He sure does,” Peeta says. He holds me close and then says, “He knows we love him, right?”
“He does,” I say. “We’re his family. Family love each other.”
“We should do something. So he has a reminder,” Peeta suggests.
I remember Lenore Dove’s flock of geese, and something lights up in my brain. “I have an idea,” I say with a yawn. “I‘ll start looking for eggs in the morning.”
“Eggs?” Peeta repeats against my hair.
“Goose eggs,” I clarify. “For hatching.”
“That’s perfect,” he says.
I feel pleased that Peeta likes my idea, and the image of Haymitch followed by goslings seems right somehow.
I fall asleep easily, expecting nightmares of pink feathered birds and golden squirrels and houses on fire, but for once, the nightmares don’t come.
Even with the water and the medicine, Haymitch spends most of the next day sleeping. At some point before lunch, he wandered back to his house to sleep in his own bed, but Peeta assures me that he’s fine.
I keep an eye out for geese on my hunt so I can follow them back to their nests.
We take a few days off from the memorial book. I want Haymitch to have his say if we add Lenore Dove. Instead, I help Peeta with the garden, and he shows me the basics of baking bread. I’m almost as bad at it as he is at hunting, but it’s a nice way to pass the time.
The next time that Haymitch shows up when we’re working on the book, he is blessedly sober, and he bears the names of twenty-three years worth of District 12 tributes.
“Don’t expect too much,” he warns us. “Some of the years are a blur. Surprised I could remember all the names.”
After the turmoil of hearing Haymitch’s time in the arena first hand, this feels almost easy by comparison. Haymitch gives us their names, and he manages to recall at least something about almost all of them. The seventeen year old from the 57th Games whose token was a silver ring from her beloved. The twelve year old from the 64th Games who had hair so blonde it was almost white and wouldn’t let go of Haymitch’s hand until he was forced into the arena. The fifteen year old with a missing hand who made it until the final five tributes by hiding until he starved to death from lack of sponsors.
They go into the book, and I hope I’m not imagining Haymitch’s sigh, like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders.
There is still more we could say about all of them, everyone in the book, and we will at some point. Haymitch will help though he refuses to write in the book himself. He claims his hands are too unsteady.
I take my time with all of Haymitch’s contributions, adding his loved ones’ and tributes’ names in my best handwriting. I don’t take it for granted, everything he shared with us, and I want his pages to look as nice as possible.
Lenore Dove’s is the hardest. He has a hard time describing her. It’s not because he can’t remember her face; it’s just difficult to put into words. Peeta is patient with him, making revision after revision to his sketch until Haymitch is satisfied.
The next day, I bring him a clutch of goose eggs and explain that they’re all from different nests so that they can interbreed.
He takes the basket like it’s something precious and carefully sets it aside before he gathers me into a hug. I can tell by the slight tremble of his hands that he knows—he is loved.