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There were several things wrong with Haymitch's awakening. They flashed through his mind in an instant, in no particular order. A trip into the arena and years of fighting the world made you jumpy at a moment's notice, with not even sleep dulling the survival instinct.
His knife was not in his hand, arms relaxed at his side; his head didn't hurt of a hangover, which, after half a century of being a daily occurrence, was still novel; he was quite comfortable and laid back, not slunched over in a chair; the world beyond his eyelids seemed bright in a way his house never was.
Most importantly, he was not jolted awake. No unexpected cold showers. No nightmare ripping a scream from his throat. His consciousness floated into him as he lay still on something other than his bed.
His instinct was to jolt up, to find the nearest weapon and arm himself in this unfamiliar setting. But when he went to move, his muscles protested, each limb weighing more than he'd lifted in his life.
The one thing he could do was open his eyes.
And there she was. Silhouetted against a muted blue sky was a woman, no, a girl who looked exactly as she had when she died in his arms. Not just any girl.
His girl.
Lenore Dove.
Seated next to him, her back to him, was Lenore Dove.
She turned, although he hadn't figured out how to move anything other than his eyes. Her smile lit him up inside, a flame starting in his heart and spreading to every end of his body.
It was then his limbs caught up with him, and he jerked upright.
"Easy there, Hay!" Lenore Dove exclaimed with a laugh as she slid out of his way. She didn't go far before Haymitch's arms were around her, pulling her back.
He'd dreamed about his lost love every night there wasn't a horrible monster waiting for him in the dark. He'd imagined her growing old beside him in the chair he'd picked out just for her, the cushions the perfect shade of gray. He'd wept, imagining her in his arms as the poison took hold.
And here she was. Whole. Solid in his grasp. Her arms around him, fingers carding their way through his hair. She smelled of grass and geese, a scent he'd never quite been able to find again.
"How- you-" For lack of anything better, he fell to a phrase he'd gotten used to as he grew into old age. "Is this real? Or not real?"
She chuckled, pulling back to press her forehead against his. "Real. I'm here. I had to fight like mad to be the one to greet you, but I think everyone knew it should be me."
Haymitch breathed in every bit of her, finding it hard to concentrate on her non-answer when she had become his whole world once again.
"Let me be a little selfish first,' she whispered, and then her lips were on his.
He didn't know how long they stayed there. Breathing seemed to be a non-concern, his only focus on the taste of her lips with nary a gumball in sight.
By the time the eventually pulled away, Haymitch's mind was coming down off of its lost-love high, and other thoughts were starting to demand attention.
"Where are we?" his mouth decided was his first question. "How are we?"
Lenore Dove grinned, nodding her head around them. "You remember the songs, surely?"
She began to sing, somewhere soft yet still defiant. Haymitch hadn't heard singing like this in a long time, and her voice was better than he remembered. The old songs had been mostly lost to time, preserved mainly in Katniss, who was reluctant to sing to anyone except her children. When he finally tuned into the words, it took him a moment to remember the hymn.
Right here in
The old therebefore,
When nothing
Is left anymore.
He finally looked beyond his girl. They were sitting in a meadow, tall grass waving in a non-existant wind. Above and beyond him, everything seemed just a little dull, like a thin fog lay over everything. The sky was dull, and he could vaguely make out trees one way and the drop of a hill another. Even the grass itself was a little faded.
And then he realized. The hand of his love, resting on his thigh, wasn't warm. There was pressure, the feeling of something there, but only the slightest temperature difference from the air.
It was somewhere earlier in the song, when he'd been too carried away by the voice of an angel. The sweet old hereafter.
"I'm dead," he stated. He should have realized it was coming. It'd been ages since the fighting, the annual and unending violence, had ended. Time blended together, but he'd known he was getting old. Older than anyone he'd ever known.
"Death is never the end," Lenore Dove whispered, finding his hand with hers. "It brought me back to you. Before you ask, no, no one knows how this is real, but we're sure it is."
"What does that even mean?" There was a laugh to it. He didn't care how. She was here with him, and that was more than he could have ever deserved.
Haymitch leaned in for another kiss. Lenore Dove obliged, but only for a brief moment. She pulled away, and Haymitch leaned after her. Instead, she stood up, reaching a hand down toward him.
"Come on," she coaxed. "I've been selfish enough. You wouldn't believe the fight I had to put up to be the one to greet you when I was the only obvious choice."
He let himself be pulled up, but used the momentum to swing his arms around her into a hug. He titled his head into the crook of her neck, breathing in the scent of her hair. "What if I want to be selfish?"
She laughed, and the fifty years of solitary torture was worth it to have her in his arms again. "We have eternity," she whispered with a squeeze. Her lips brushed her ear as she whispered, "I love you like all-fire."
"As do I."
It was in their seperation that he realized something more about him felt off. He could just barely look over Lenore Dove's head when he stood upright. He'd grown more than that, he thought, after his games. When he looked down, the hands holding hers were young, devoid of the scars and wrinkles he'd acquired over the rest of his life.
Lenore Dove cut off his wondering. "Everything is subjective here. You can be whenever you want." She paused to make a sound, like she was trying to hold a laugh in. At his perplexed look, she let it out properly with a chuckle. "When you were asleep, while I waited, you looked as you did in life. The moment you saw me, you changed. In a blink, you were sixteen again." She leaned in closer. "We can finally grow old together."
It took several minutes after that to stop the next round of kissing. Finally, when they pulled apart, Haymitch lifted the hem of his simple tee. The long slit of Silka's axe and the multiple others from the Capitol putting him back together were still there. This time, he blinked, and they vanished. Another blink and they returned. He wasn't sure which he preferred.
Finally, Lenore Dove led them off the hillside, arm in arm. On the way, she explained the strange world they found themselves in, the hereafter.
The world, it seemed, was built upon their memories. The further they walked, the more came into focus through the fog, until he was looking at a strange variation of District Twelve. The houses of his childhood and early adulthood, with their ramshackle wooden supports and quick fixes, broken glass and broken fences, were intermixed with the newer styles of the post-revolution construction, backed by support and styles of other districts and District Thirteen's energy sources. The street grid wasn't the same, some stretched longer and others shorter, while whole rows were moved in some cases. Standing tall in near the center was the Town Hall, with the underlying architecture of the former Justice Building seeping through. He saw no Victor's Village, the only thing left untouched by the bombs, but he also saw no lasting damage or the graveyards left over from the onslaught.
Most houses had a television. While the memories of mandatory Hunger Games and constant Capitol TV still made some people unsettled by the mere presence of the box, they were emotionally controlled. The screens let departed loved ones view the ones left behind, or those in this plane that dwelled elsewhere.
"So you-" Haymitch cut himself off, thinking of the years he'd spent avoiding everyone any sinking further into the worst of himself.
Lenore Dove's lips pursed, pulling into a hard line. "I did. I was always watching, Hay. Although I think you knew that."
He nodded, and that was that.
The people here still acted as if they were alive, for the most part. They couldn't teleport or walk through walls, and they still slept and ate. Food could appear in your pantry or you could run to an un-manned market where the Hob once was. People could work like they used to or relax, and the world would fill in the gap where their labor once was. There was no reproduction, although Lenore Dove winked as she told him other aspects still worked.
They reached the town far faster than he thought they should, given the initial view he had of Twelve. He wasn't sure if that was this world altering reality, or just his ability to get lost in his girl. He had a lifetime to make up for.
Lenore Dove led them through the streets with ease, obviously heading toward the town center. Haymitch let himself be dragged along, allowing his attention to settle on the people. He recognized people of all ages and from all ages. An old man he remembered tossing a piece of candy to Sid once chatting with a young woman he knew had perished in the bombs. It was hard for him to pinpoint when exactly he knew people from, given his lack of social interactions for 25 years. Even after peace fell, it took a lot of coaxing from Katniss and Peeta to get him out of his house.
The square was much livelier than he'd ever seen it. After the war, people had been cautious about large gatherings, although the new town population tried to make the space inviting. This town square was full of heart, with vibrant-yet-dulled flowers and plant and decorations. Young children, though Haymitch didn't know how old they might have been, were running around, while adults tended to the gardens.
Milling in small groups were people Haymitch never though he'd see again. Maysilee and Merrilee Donner, no older than 20 in coordinated dresses, were talking with Tam Amber, Burdock Everdeen, and Blair, both teenagers, while an older Wyatt Callow was chatting to young Astrid Everdeen as Louella McCoy braided Primrose Everdeen's hair, both in their late teens.
But rushing toward him, the exact age he'd seen them last, were Ma and Sid. In an instant, he was engulfed in a hug so tight he was glad he didn't seem to need to breathe. He closed his eyes and pretended it was the morning of July 4th, when the 50th Reaping loomed, and he had remembered to fill the cistern, and two of the three most important people were here in his arms and safe. After a moment, he felt a third weight settle behind him, and he knocked that tally up to three of three.
No one knew how long they stayed there until a dramatic cough sounded. Haymitch's eyes snapped open as his family withdrew itself. A very peeved Maysilee glared at him. As his family cleared a path, she marched up and very firmly hit him in the shoulder before pulling him into a hug.
"I was the first Mockingjay," she whispered in his ear, "or I could have been if someone hadn't wanted all the fun for himself."
Haymitch tried in vain to pull away from her. His mind supplied him with the image of a pink beak speared through her throat, and he hugged back. "Missed you, too, sis."
She finally pulled away, and Haymitch was able to hug his fellow tributes of the 50th Games. Wyatt opted for a solid handshake, and a cannon went off in Haymitch's mind. Louella squeezed his midsection tightly, and Haymitch remembered how limp those arms were on the Capitol street.
He shook his head. He'd lived with the reality of their deaths for fifty-some years. They had happened, and he couldn't change it, but here, now, they were in his arms. They didn't hate him. They had been waiting for him.
They didn't hate him.
And then a cold wave washed over him as he watched them bicker good-naturedly with each other. His attempt at forgetting reality led him to a different truth, one a different brand of pain than watching his friends die.
Over twenty three years, he'd been tasked with mentoring lambs to the slaughter. Until year twenty four, he'd failed at getting them through. He'd tried a few times, but it had hurt him too much to try to help them, although he was their only hope. He'd failed them, like he'd failed himself, his family, his friends. He didn't deserve this warm welcome.
"-Haymitch. Haymitch!"
It was another punch from Maysilee that brought him back. He blinked at the concerned faces of the people he'd lost, the people he couldn't protect even though he'd tried. Where were the ones he hadn't tried for?
"You're spiraling," Maysilee stated. "Stop it."
"May, go easy on him," Louella stepped up to pull on her skirt. "He's beat himself up enough already. Give him a minute." She turned her gaze to him, and he was struck by the earnestness in her eyes. "Hey, Hay."
The words let Haymitch take a deep breath. "Hey, sweetheart."
Louella pat his arm, then trailed her fingers down to hold his hand. "Everyone here has had time to process their lives. You'll get that time to. Some may want to make amends, some may want to never see you. Some have already moved on, for real this time. It is what it is."
A laugh bubbled up out of nowhere. "When did you get so wise?"
She smirked. "I was always the smartest. You all never noticed."
"We resent that," Wyatt called out loudly, earning laughs from the whole group.
It struck him as odd, seeing his family laughing with his fellow tributes with his friends. They were never people who should have interacted, but they seemed tight-knit. He guessed they had had a while to get to know each other, but they hadn't had to. They must have wanted to. Louella said some people had moved on, and the presence of each of them there meant they hadn't.
Some part of them, and he could never know how much, had waited for him.
Did he deserve that?
An arm looped around his, and Lenore Dove was there. "Listen to them. Don't think about it now. Let yourself enjoy for a moment."
"I spent twenty five years forgetting how to enjoy things."
"And then another twenty five finally letting the people who wormed their way into your heart teach you how to do it again." She paused, obviously contemplating something. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, "They're mourning, you know. I'm sure you'll see it on the television."
"And if I don't want to see?" He didn't. He didn't want to see whether he'd earned Katniss's true tears or her stoic ones. What arrangment of flowers Peeta would set aside for his tombstone. If Effie would wear black or her current favorite shade of neon to his funeral.
"Then you don't have to," assured his love. "Focus on us. We have so many stories to tell you."
She nodded at Maysilee. "She and Johanna Mason are pen pals, and Tam Amber engraved a mockingjay for the Donner house. The pair of them are growing up together, the way it should have been. Madge lives with them, too, and it's almost like there's three of them."
Wyatt. "He lives in Three. Beetee and Ampert have essentially adopted him. They like to watch the living scientists like its a sports game, critiquing where they've gone wrong."
Louella. "She and Prim are best friends. We did find Lou Lou, too. She's from Eleven, name's Amara. Louella visits her often, as do Maysilee and Wyatt. Wellie's come along a few times, too.
"Astrid and Burdock are insufferable. The Covey travels and performs, as we were meant to. Plutarch and Cinna and the others are in the Second Capitol. There's two of them here, for those on different sides of the conflict. Same with Two. It's more mixed in the districts."
A shudder ran through Haymitch. "Snow? Coin?"
Thankfully, Lenore Dove shook her head. "No one's seen Snow. There's ghost stories that he roams the undistricted lands, looking for someone. Coin is in Thirteen, atoning or something. It's aboveground, by the way."
Haymitch hummed. "I missed a lot." He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Sorry I couldn't be here sooner."
"Hush," she snapped back. "The world needed you in the therebefore. I can think of at least two people, especially.
"Besides. You stopped the sunrise. That was worth the wait."
And he kissed her. He imagined he'd be doing a lot more of it as he pulled a page from the Donner's book. He was going to grow old with his sweetheart. He would see Katniss and Peeta and Effie again. He'd learn to forgive himself for his lows, because his highs had changed the world.
"Anything for you."