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Haymitch might hate the Victory Tours more than the Games themselves. It's not enough for the Capitol to force children to kill each other, but then they have to parade the winning child around every district and rub into the faces of grieving families that this child is here and theirs is not.
Everyone has to play nice— the families are forced to play nice even if the child standing before them and shaking their hands might very well be the killer who stole their own kid from them. The Capitol doesn't care, couldn't care less if they tried. Snow likes dog fighting and dog fighting doesn't only happen in the arena.
He's the ringmaster, the breeder of all these different types of rabid dogs, and he likes to orchestrate the bubbling animosity between them. Nobody would pay to watch dogs get along, to share their treats with one another and lick each other's wounds.
Snow needs his abused dogs to hate each other more than they hate their abuser.
The annual Hunger Games and following Victory Tour help him achieve his goal. Eleven out of twelve districts always hate the Victor. The family of the dead Tribute whose district won hates the Victor. Only the Capitol loves them and the knowledge that the Capitol loves them makes the districts hate them even more.
Haymitch knows what it's like to be hated. He's the laughing stock of Panem, the drunkard Victor of the iconic second Quarter Quell who could've been the greatest Victor they ever had— the man who could've changed District Twelve. But he didn't and he didn't even try to. President Snow saw to that when he killed his mother, brother, and girl, and now his own people hate him more than he loves his bottle.
Doesn't matter to him though. He hates them just as much and that's why he's still Snow's dog. He feels for his district exactly what Snow wants him to feel.
They're a miserable bunch, District Twelve. It's why they're the first stop on the Victory Tour. Better to get 'em out of the way before moving onto more exciting fun. It's why Haymitch is sitting on his worn leather couch with a bin beside him full of empty bottles as he suckles the last drop out of his current one. He should be out in the middle of town, greeting the Victor and their team of mentors and stylists.
But he's not and neither is most of District Twelve. The Capitol camera crew will have a small crowd of people standing around to get a good enough shot of the Victor being welcomed before they pack right up and spend the rest of the trip in the best inn District Twelve has to offer, which isn't much. They won't leave it until the morning comes when they can run back onto their luxury train where the ickies can't get them.
The Capitol stopped caring about District Twelve a long time ago.
He can hear Effie's shrill voice scolding him for wasting away like this instead of doing his duties and welcoming the Victor. He lets out a belch in response to the crazy-haired woman in his head.
Finnick Odair. Fourteen years old. Youngest Victor in the history of the Games. A pretty little thing not a single person except maybe Mags Flanagan expected to win and who the entire Capitol wanted to win.
He's never had the displeasure of meeting the kid, but he's seen enough on the screens to know he's another insufferable, snobby Career brat. There's enough of 'em to go around in the Victors pool already and at least they're all over twenty so they're mature enough to hold a manageable conversation. He ain't talking to some pubescent kid who likely thinks the world currently revolves around him.
Mags seems to be the outlier among the Career Victors, considering how sweet and humble she is, but that could entirely be due to age. Who knows what she was like as a young victor? And she was the first Victor to actually get rewarded after winning the Games, making her that much more superior to everyone else. Maybe that's why she was able to handle Odair and every other District Four Victor even though Haymitch knows they must drive her insane with their shallowness.
For a second, he wonders if he annoyed her too when she mentored him for his Games, but then he snorts. He was probably the worst of the worst despite being from backwater District Twelve. If it weren't for his deluded sense of justice, Mags wouldn't have been tortured by Snow.
Wiress would still be able to speak and think properly.
Little Ampert—
Point is, he has better things to do than waste his time pretending to get along with a snot-nosed kid and making nice with an old woman he already sees once a year. He'd only disappoint anyways.
Haymitch clumsily throws his bottle into the bin, listening to it rattle noisily against the others. Head too heavy to twist around, he fumbles for another bottle without looking. Just his shit luck, there's nothing. The rest of his white liquor is in a cabinet in the kitchen.
He's about to get up and grab it when he hears a thud against the front window of his house.
He might not be as able as he used to be but once a Tribute always a Tribute. Switching tactics, he grabs the knife laying on his lap and stumbles to the front door. Ripping it open immediately exposes the chill of the winter season to his unshaven face, sobering him up some. His unkept front yard is covered in snow, something he would've known if he'd ever bothered to open his curtains and leave his couch this entire week.
In the distance, past the stretch of land and bare trees that is Twelve's useless Victors' Village, the town is quiet and dark. Everyone's gone to bed. He would've thought he got the dates of the Victory Tour mixed up if it weren't for the small figure standing across from him.
"The fuck..," Haymitch mumbles under his freezing breath, the hand holding his knife still raised.
"...Sorry," the boy just barely whispers. Somehow, he can hear him. "I didn't know this was your house. I thought it was empty."
Haymitch turns his head to glance at the small splotch of snow sticking to his brick wall. There's another sliding down his window. He redirects his gaze to the kid, slowly lowering his knife.
Finnick Odair, Victor of the sixty-fifth Hunger Games in the flesh. Of fuckin' course Haymitch doesn't get the pleasure of avoiding meeting him. Not that he's making much of an impression anyways, standing there shivering with barely any clothes on his body. Whoever styled him today must be the same lunatic who sent him out in the opening ceremony wearing nothing but a loincloth.
He's wearing a necklace made of seashells but it looks more like a collar, tight around his throat. His lace top is sleeveless and see-through, loose bottoms dark like Twelve's coal. The kid's cheeks and the tip of his nose are flushed from the cold, snowflakes sitting on his golden brown curls and lashes.
He's even more beautiful in person. An unreal, indescribable kind of beauty that's never been seen before. The other Tributes were dead before the Games even began.
Every mentor knew that this year. It's why nobody was surprised when their kids died. Haymitch is just the last one to realize it.
"Yeah, whatever," he says. His eyes drop to the ball of snow clutched tightly in the boy's bare hand. "Better drop that before you get frostbite."
"Oh," Finnick mumbles before dropping it. He's shivering but not as much as someone from another district might, probably because he's used to being in cold water. Still, why wouldn't his team dress him in a coat or something? They knew damn well Twelve has snow during this time of the year.
"First time seeing snow?" Haymitch doesn't know why he's entertaining a conversation right now. His liquor's waiting for him. His warm house is waiting for him. Instead, he's outside in the freezing cold talking to a fourteen-year-old who seems absolutely nothing like the punk on television.
Finnick nods, looking tiny in the vast space of his front yard. It's an interesting descriptor to come to mind, considering this is the same boy who killed every single Career with his trident and net.
"Yeah, usually is for every Victor," Haymitch says. Since me, he doesn't say.
"What are you doing? Throwing snowballs at my innocent house?" he asks after a bout of silence.
"Sorry," the boy repeats quietly, looking down.
"I didn't ask for an apology," Haymitch says, a little gruffer than he intended, and Finnick's shoulders hike up to his ears. He withholds a sigh; this is why he doesn't talk to anyone anymore. Strange though, to see a boy who ruthlessly murdered other kids, and was at one point covered in their blood, flinch at an overweight, middle-aged waste of space like him.
In his current state, Haymitch is the less harmful one out of the two of them.
Still, some feeling that makes him want to rub at his chest until the ache goes away makes him reach into the doorway of his house and grab two coats off the rack. They smell stale, unused. He tosses one at the boy's feet.
"How do you know what a snowball is anyways?" he asks as he fumbles his way into his own coat, still drunk.
"Mags," the kid answers simply and Haymitch has to snort at the comical sight of the winter coat absolutely swallowing him up. It reaches down to his knees, engulfing his hands. Sid used to look the same in his clothes.
"Give me back my shirt, Sid," Haymitch groans, looking down at his half-empty drawer in exasperation.
"No, Hayhay, I like wearing it!" Sid responds with a pout from where he's sitting on the floor, playing with an old doll Haymitch bartered for at the Hob. Not that the Hob sells toys. He traded with a little girl who accompanied her mother to work. She drove a tough bargain for a tiny twelve-year-old.
"Oh, yeah? And the stink of my sweat doesn't bother you?" he counters, crossing his arms over his chest to glare at his little brother.
Sid shakes his head as he makes the doll walk. "Nuh uh! I like it because it feels like you're always hugging me."
Haymitch rubs his hands down his face roughly, dropping to sit on his snowy front steps. The wet cold immediately seeps into his pants but he doesn't care. Hasn't cared about anything for a long time. Refuses to.
"Go inside and grab me a bottle of liquor," he orders the boy as he continues to rub at his tired face and the scruff on his jaw. He's not drunk enough for this— for this unforgiving winter night on his lonely old property where the face of a fourteen-year-old killer is starting to blur into someone more innocent, someone untouched by the world's sickness.
"What?" Si— Finnick asks, stupidly. Standing there with his stupid dark blond hair in Haymitch's stupid fucking clothes.
"You deaf, boy?!" Haymitch shouts suddenly, raising his head. His eyes feel sore and bloodshot. His angry voice echoes across the desolate Victors' Village. "I said go get me some fucking liquor!"
Snow crunches as the boy hurries past him into his house, almost tripping over himself.
No more than two minutes pass before a bottle enters his side view. He grabs it and immediately pops it open to guzzle down. Eyes closed, he lets the cool, sharp liquid slip down his agitated throat and warm his body like a compassionate lover. Bliss takes over his quieting mind, shoving all else to the back.
Finally, he can think clearer, and ain't that ironic? Drowning's never felt better.
When he opens his eyes again, the boy is back to being several feet away from him. Good. Haymitch isn't sure what he's got but he knows it's contagious. Young one like Finnick Odair with the rest of his spectacular life ahead of him has no business hanging around a parasite like Haymitch Abernathy.
He takes another sip, watching the kid draw into the snow with a finger, squatting on the ground and looking even smaller in his coat like this. He briefly thinks about the way he'd flinched when Haymitch yelled, how he'd hurried to obey him. If he had the energy to feel anything besides fuckin' great now that he's drinking again, he might feel guilty.
What's the kid doing here anyway? Must've snuck out from his inn without Mags knowing, else he wouldn't be here. Probably upset because the District Twelve civilians are the first ever people in his life to not swoon over his pretty boy persona and kiss his feet when he walks by.
Haymitch snorts into his bottle. "This a tantrum? Acting out and running away because nobody gives a shit about you here, pretty boy?"
Those small shoulders tense up before forcing themselves to relax. He doesn't look up, continuing to doodle away. "It doesn't look like they give a shit about you either."
Haymitch narrows his eyes at the retort. This is the Victor he expected. Then, he smiles, a little meanly, as the liquor starts to form a cloud and everything gets hazy. "No, but least I'm used to it. All you've got going for you is your pretty little face and now you can't stand the fact that not everyone is as obsessed with you as your superficial admirers are. You think they'd love you if you didn't look the way you do?"
It's silent between them.
Haymitch suddenly feels disgusting. What the hell is he doing, talking to a little boy like this? Victor or not, he's a child. It's not his fault he's beautiful— not his fault he has admirers. Haymitch swipes at his mouth, lowering the bottle.
He clears his throat. "Ever build a snowman?"
The boy pauses his drawing and raises his head just slightly. "What's a snowman?"
Haymitch clumsily reaches into his coat pocket and yanks out a pair of gloves. He tosses them to the kid, who stares at them for a moment before slowly putting them on. They're huge on him.
"Three big balls of snow stacked on top of each other. The biggest is on the bottom, smallest on top. Put some rocks on the middle ball and there you have a shirt. Give it a face with some more rocks and a stick for a nose, and you have a snowman," Haymitch explains simply, drumming his fingers on the glass bottle.
"Kind of like a sandcastle," Finnick comments.
"I don't know what that is but judging by the name, I'm gonna say it's a castle made out of... maybe sand?" Haymitch responds dryly.
The boy ducks his head to hide his dimpled smile, and at this, Haymitch feels his chest warm faster than the liquor could warm him.
He stands up with effort and the grunt of a man two times his age. "Come on, then. Let's get to work."
Mags is at his door the next morning, an expensive dark brown fur coat in the crook of her elbow and a pair of matching gloves sitting on top. She's dressed for the weather as well, but her aging body betrays how she tries to hide the fact that she's feeling the chill.
Last he saw her was almost six months ago, only for the single week it took to take the reaped kids to the Capitol and prepare them for the arena. His kids died in the first hour and he was back in Twelve, wasting away before sunset. That's how it usually goes.
Mags is too polite to wrinkle her nose at him, but he can tell she wants to. He grins at her anyway, quite aware that he looks and smells like a garbage dump. His fingers run through his tangled, greasy hair as he steps aside for her to enter. She doesn't and instead turns her attention to the front yard.
"I was just about to wake him," he says when she doesn't say anything first, grin dropping as he awkwardly scratches his side. Now that he's— well, he wouldn't say sober since he only stopped drinking a couple hours ago and only because he fell asleep— more alert, the memories of last night make him grimace. Did he seriously yell at a little kid, a Victor, to get him more liquor? And then, what, made a snowman with him?
Why the hell didn't he just send him back to town?
"Finnick's touch?" Mags finally speaks, nodding her head towards the swirly eyebrows drawn on the snowman.
If Haymitch could still feel embarrassment and shame, he'd regret the way he just guffawed in front an old lady as dignified as Mags. "Oh, yeah. Kid wanted to recreate his escort; Silly Tilly, right? He's an artist, that one."
Drunk out of his mind, Haymitch had found it the most hilarious thing in the world when the boy doodled a pair of kooky eyebrows on the snowman's face. Seriously, he fell over and almost knocked their hard work down in his stumble. Finnick started giggling too and Haymitch still isn't sure if it's because he also found the eyebrows hilarious or because Haymitch looked like an idiot.
Probably the latter, that brat.
"He goes by Tilly Serbius but yes," Mags replies, smiling fondly. She turns back to Haymitch, meeting his eyes. Her gaze is soft and warm, like always. He doesn't deserve it. "Did you make this with him?"
He shrugs, skin beginning to itch. "Mostly just watched. Told him what to do and all. Helped him get the first ball rolling."
Mags steps inside and Haymitch shuts the door behind her to seal away the chill. He rubs his arms to get warm as he stands awkwardly at the entrance. He's never done this... house etiquette thing, considering nobody's been in his house since his own Victory tour fifteen years ago. Is he supposed to offer her a drink or something? Ain't like he has clean dishes to offer in the first place.
Thankfully, Mags doesn't seem to expect anything as she takes a seat on his couch. She looks at him— really stares at him for a second. "How are you, Haymitch?"
Haymitch holds back a sigh. This is why he doesn't talk to anybody but Chaff, who he can drink with while only having to worry about spilling his literal guts and not his proverbial ones. He plops down in his seat, the cushion groaning under his weight.
"Just fine, Mags," he answers. That statement probably won't look too great if he succumbs to the current urge to swipe a nearby bottle off his table.
"You didn't come see us yesterday," she says.
Haymitch shrugs. "I rarely show up to these things. Nothing personal."
"I didn't think it was," she responds easily, glancing around the house. It's a pigsty. He wonders how it must feel for her, to see someone she mentored at sixteen turn into this. He wasn't always this hopeless, after all. Well, the Haymitch Abernathy she knew is long gone and buried beside his ma, Sid, and darling Lenore Dove.
He can tell she wants to speak up, to talk to him about this lifestyle. Give him advice to get him out of it. Not that she has any right to, given this is the first time she's checked up on him this closely since his Victory Tour. Between him and Finnick, District Four has had two other Victors and yet she's never bothered visiting him during their tours.
Of course, he doesn't hold any of this against her.
Everyone's given up on him because he made sure they would. Burdock, Blair, Asterid— he chased them all away on purpose. Millions of people had a front row seat to his disastrous Games. He doesn't need anyone getting an up close and personal view to his collapsing post-Games life too.
They'll only get hurt anyways, if they stick close to him.
"Haymitch..," Mags begins but she cuts herself off when Finnick walks in.
He looks younger than he already is as he tiredly rubs his eye with a fist, hair tussled and face puffy with sleep. Wearing Haymitch's humungous shirt and sweatpants don't help this image but it sure is a funny sight.
At least, it is funny until Haymitch sees Mags' reaction to the clothes. She glances between the both of them like she's trying to figure something out.
Haymitch realizes what she's thinking probably before even she can put together the absurd idea she has in her mind.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" he asks, looking right back at her. He laughs humourlessly, shooting to his feet.
Finnick looks confused, startled. "Mags?"
She blinks and turns her gaze to the kid, regret beginning to colour her features. Too fuckin' late, considering she just wordlessly accused him of fucking a child. Or thought he was capable of it.
"Get out of my house," he orders as he grabs a bottle, waving it at the front door.
Mags looks so damn miserable he almost laughs. Instead, he takes a large swig of his drink.
"Come along, Finnick. We have to leave for the train soon," she says quietly, handing him the coat she brought.
The kid is still waking up, but he can sense the tension so he does what he's asked to do before pausing. He grabs the hem of his borrowed shirt. "Wait, your clothes, Haym—"
Haymitch gives the boy a blank stare. "I'm starting to think you really are fucking deaf."
Finnick doesn't flinch but his big green eyes blink up at him, growing wet with hurt. Go. Get out before I ruin you too.
"Get out!" he yelled until his throat hurt, throwing glass after glass at his wall.
Burdock, Blair, Asterid, Merrilee— they all run without looking back.
"Let's go, Finnick," Mags prompts again.
He slams the door behind them when they leave and gulps down the rest of the bottle. It doesn't burn anymore. Stopped burning years ago.
He grabs another and moves to sit back down, but then he stops and opens the front door again. Mags and the kid are farther away now, walking the path back to town. Haymitch takes another swig, licks his cracked lips, and looks down at the snowman from the night before.
He kicks it over.
The boy looks back.