Dark Young Mentor! Haymitch x Weak! Reader
Haymitch Abernathy knows this with the same certainty he knows the sun will rise over the slag heaps back home, that the Capitol will keep taking children, that the nightmares will never stop.
He has known it since the moment you stumbled off the train, small, sickly, coughing from the coal dust that seems permanently lodged in your lungs. Seam through and through, with that underfed look that marks your people like a brand.
You are seventeen. Same age he was, two years ago, when he crawled out of that arena covered in other children's blood.
"Stop," he says flatly, watching you attempt to throw a knife at the training dummy for the fifteenth time. It clatters to the ground three feet short of the target.
You flinch at his voice. You always flinch. That's the problem. You flinch at everything. The loud noises, the Career tributes' laughter, the Avoxes who move too quietly.
You will flinch yourself right into an early grave the moment that gong sounds.
"I'm trying," you say, and your voice comes out thin, reedy. Pathetic.
"You're failing." Haymitch pushes off the wall where he's been leaning, crossing the training room floor with the kind of deliberate stride he learned to affect in the Capitol. Confidence. Predator, not prey.
You bend to retrieve the knife, and he watches you. Really watches you, the way he's been watching you for three days now, the way your hands tremble, the way you catalogue every exit, and the way you make yourself small, invisible, a nothing-girl that no one will remember.
That's it. That's the thing he's been looking for.
"You're not going to win by fighting," he says.
You look up at him with those dark Seam eyes, and something flickers there. Not hope, you're not stupid enough for hope, but attention.
Haymitch crouches down to your level, close enough that you can't look away. This near, he can see the shadows under your eyes, the way your collarbones jut too sharply beneath your training shirt.
You smell like the soap they give tributes, artificial flowers trying to cover the scent of fear.
"You're going to win by not being worth killing."
The interview is a disaster.
You sit beside him in the elevator afterward, silent, your ridiculous Capitol dress pooling around your feet like spilled blood.
Caesar Flickerman had tried. He always tries. But you gave him nothing. Monosyllables. Downcast eyes. The audience has already forgotten you by the time you walked offstage.
"That was the point," Haymitch says, when the doors close.
"They don't remember you. Good." He jabs the button for the twelfth floor harder than necessary.
"The Careers are already making lists. Deciding who to hunt first, who's a threat, who'll make good entertainment for the sponsors. You know where you are on that list?"
"Nowhere." He turns to face you fully. "You're nothing to them. A footnote. Someone who'll probably die in the bloodbath without anyone having to lift a finger. They're not going to waste time tracking you through the arena when there are bigger targets."
The elevator hums around you both, while you're quiet for a long moment.
It isn't a question. Haymitch studies your face, searching for the crack in your composure, the moment you'll break.
But you just stand there, small and trembling and so goddamn fragile, looking at him like you're already dead and just waiting for your body to catch up.
"I think you can't win the way they expect," he says finally. "So we're not going to play their game."
He spends every night of the remaining prep time in your quarters.
Not like that. He isn't that kind of monster, despite what the Capitol has tried to make him. But he sits in the chair by your window and talks. Strategy. Survival.
Every dirty trick he learned in his own Games, a sponsor manipulation tactic, and a way to find water and every plant that will kill instead of cure.
You absorb it all with a quiet intensity that surprises him. You don't complain, and don't cry, you just listen, those eyes fixed on his face like he's the only solid thing in a world gone liquid.
"You're not sleeping," you say, on the third night.
Haymitch pauses mid-sentence. "Neither are you."
Something twitches at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. He doesn't smile anymore, not really. But close. "Dreams," he says shortly. "Comes with the territory. You'll understand, if you make it out."
When, he thinks, and the fierceness of it surprises him. When you make it out.
You're quiet for a moment. Then speak.
"Will you be there? When I come back?"
The question hits him somewhere soft, somewhere he thought the arena had burned out of him entirely. He looks at you, this small, weak, impossibly stubborn girl, and feels something shift in his chest.
"Yeah," he says roughly. "I'll be there."
The morning of the Games, Marcus finds you in the launch room.
Your boy. The other tribute from Twelve. He's tall and broad-shouldered, with the kind of quiet strength that comes from years in the mines. You've loved him since you were fourteen, sneaking kisses behind the slag heaps, dreaming about a future you'll never have.
He pulls you into his arms, and Haymitch watches from the doorway, something ugly twisting in his gut.
"Stay hidden," Marcus murmurs against your hair. "Promise me. No matter what happens, you stay hidden."
"I promise," you whisper back.
"I will find you. When it's safe, I will find you, and we'll figure it out together."
Haymitch clears his throat. "It's time."
Marcus pulls back, cups your face in his hands, and kisses you. Soft and desperate and full of everything he can't say. Then he's gone, escorted to his own launch room, and you're left standing there with tears streaming down your face.
You don't see the way Haymitch's hands clench at his sides, and you don't see the calculation behind his eyes, the cold arithmetic of survival already spinning in his mind.
Two tributes. One mentor. Not enough sponsor money for both.
He's already made his choice.
The arena that year is a flooded cityscape. Crumbling buildings rising from black water, bridges that collapse without warning, things moving beneath the surface that the Gamemakers have engineered to ensure the entertainment never stops.
Haymitch watches from the mentor's booth, hands white-knuckled on the edge of his console, as the countdown begins.
You run. Not toward the Cornucopia, where the Careers are already converging in a clash of steel and screams, but away. Into the maze of half-drowned streets, disappearing into the shadows like you've been doing it your whole life.
Marcus runs too, but toward the Cornucopia. Toward the weapons.
He snags a knife and a pack before the Careers notice him, then vanishes into the ruins on the opposite side of the arena.
Smart, Haymitch thinks. Both of you.
The bloodbath claims nine tributes in the first hour. Neither of you are among them.
He finds you on the screens, a small figure huddled in the upper floors of a tilting apartment building, shivering in your wet clothes, and something in his chest loosens just slightly.
A sponsor approaches Haymitch at the viewing party. One of the wealthy Capitol elite, dripping in jewels and synthetic skin, eager to play patron to a tribute who might actually survive.
"The boy from Twelve," she purrs. "He's quite impressive. That fight with the tribute from Nine was brutal. I would like to send him something. A weapon, perhaps. Good steel."
Haymitch's mind races. A weapon for Marcus would give him a real chance against the Careers. He's strong, capable, knows how to fight. With proper equipment, he could make it to the finale.
But the sponsor money is limited. Every gift is a choice. Every choice means someone else doesn't get one.
He thinks of you, shivering in your hiding spot, rationing your water, flinching at every sound. He thinks of the thermal blanket you need, the water purification tablets that could save your life when the Gamemakers inevitably poison the supply.
He thinks of the way you looked at him in the elevator. The way you asked if he would be there when you came back.
"The girl," Haymitch says. "Put your money on the girl."
The sponsor frowns. "The girl? She hasn't done anything. She just hides."
"Exactly." He leans in, letting his voice drop to a conspiratorial murmur. "The Careers aren't hunting her. They don't even remember she exists. And when they've finished killing each other, she'll still be there. Waiting."
It takes an hour of charm and manipulation. Skills he learned at Snow's parties, bought with pieces of his soul. But he walks away with enough sponsor money for three gifts.
You're watching from your hiding spot when the Careers find Marcus.
Haymitch watches you watching, sees the moment your hand flies to your mouth, the moment your whole body goes rigid with horror.
On another screen, Marcus is fighting. Three against one, hopeless odds, but he doesn't give up. He takes one of them down before the girl from One opens his throat with her sword.
You just sit there, frozen, while the light fades from his eyes on the screen a hundred feet away.
Haymitch closes his eyes and tells himself it was necessary.
And the days blur together.
You don't fight, because you hide as you creep through the ruins like a ghost, drinking rainwater collected in broken gutters, surviving on the gifts Haymitch sends you. The thermal blanket. The water purification tablets. The burn cream when you barely escape a fire.
Each gift is a message: I'm watching. I'm here. Keep going.
You receive each one with hollow eyes, going through the motions of survival without any of the spark you'd had before. Marcus's death has gutted you.
Meanwhile you move like a sleepwalker, like someone who's already decided they're going to die and is just waiting for the formality.
As you mentor watches, and worries, and waits.
On day nine, you kill someone.
The boy from Seven tracks you to your hiding spot. He's bigger than you. Stronger. You don't stand a chance.
But when his hands close around your throat, something shifts in your eyes. Some spark of desperate, animal survival that refuses to go quietly.
You drive the fish hook into his eye.
The cannon fires, and you collapse beside his body, sobbing. But you're alive.
Haymitch sits on the floor of the mentor's booth, shaking, and listens to you cry a hundred miles away. He tells himself it was worth it. That this is what survival costs.
By day twelve, only four tributes remain.
You, the boy from Two, the girl from One, and the boy from Four. The Careers have fractured, turning on each other as the finale approaches, but they're all still deadlier than you could ever hope to be.
The Gamemakers drive everyone toward the center. The half-collapsed stadium rising from the water like a broken crown.
Haymitch watches you limp toward it, one hand pressed to your side where you took a knife wound two days before. The sponsors have gone silent. Everyone knows how this will end.
Everyone except Haymitch.
The finale is a mess of blood and steel and screaming.
The Careers fight each other first. You hide in the shadows, and for one wild moment, Haymitch thinks you might make it.
Then the boy from Four sees you.
He's massive, wielding a trident like an extension of his arm. You have a knife and a fish hook and a body that's failing you.
For the first time in the entire Games, you don't run. You stand there, swaying, and wait.
The boy from Four lunges.
Not a flinch. A deliberate, calculated fall. The trident passes through empty air. You drive the fish hook into his neck before he can recover.
Behind you, the boy from Two finishes off the girl from One and turns, ready to claim his victory.
You look at the camera. Directly at Haymitch. And smile.
They pull you out of the rubble three hours later, more dead than alive.
Haymitch is there when they bring you in, shoving past Peacekeepers and Capitol officials. You're so small on the stretcher, so pale.
"She's alive," a medic says.
He sits beside your bed for six days while they put you back together. When you wake, the first thing you say is his name.
"I told you," he says roughly. "I would be there."
You reach for his hand. Your grip is weak, but certain.
The Victory Tour is over, and the cameras are gone. District Twelve has settled back into its gray routine, and two victors rattle around in houses that stood empty for so long.
You find him on his porch at three in the morning, a bottle in his hand. The first you've seen him touch in weeks.
He doesn't look up. "Go back to bed."
"No." You lower yourself onto the step beside him. "What happened?"
For a long moment, silence. Then he lifts the bottle, drinks, and laughs. Hollow, broken.
"Anniversary," he says. "Two years ago today."
"My mother. My brother. My girl." The words come out flat, rehearsed. "Snow killed them. Two weeks after my Games. Because I used that forcefield trick. Made him look like a fool. So he took everyone I loved."
The cold seeps into your bones. You had heard rumors. But hearing him say it.
"Haymitch, I'm so sorry."
"Don't." He turns to look at you, eyes red-rimmed. "Don't be sorry. Be smart. Because that's what happens when you win. When you matter to someone."
You reach for his hand. He pulls away.
"I told myself I wouldn't do this. Wouldn't let anyone get close again." He stops, jaw working. "But I couldn't help it. Not with you."
"I love you." He says it like a confession. Like a curse.
"I've loved you since you looked at that camera and smiled at me like you trusted me to understand. I know it's wrong that I was your mentor, I'm supposed to protect you. But I can't stop."
"And I know I shouldn't feel this way. Every day I tell myself to pull back, and every day you're the first thing I think about when I wake up."
The word comes out sharper than you intend. You see him flinch, see the hope in his eyes die.
"I can't," you say, and your voice breaks. "Haymitch, I can't."
The name hangs between you. Your boyfriend. Dead on day four while you hid and listened to him scream.
"I watched him die," you whisper. "I couldn't do anything. I just hid there and I didn't do anything."
"Stop." He uses the same word you used but with a tight voice.
"And I can't love anyone else when I'm the reason he's dead."
Something in his tone makes you pause. You look at him. Really look. And see something unfamiliar in his face. Something like guilt.
"You're not the reason he's dead." Haymitch sets the bottle down carefully. His hands are shaking. "I am."
"What are you talking about?"
"The sponsors. Day three." He won't meet your eyes. "Someone wanted to send him a weapon. Good steel. Enough to give him a fighting chance. I talked them out of it."
"I redirected the funds to you instead. The thermal blanket. The tablets." His voice is steady now, horribly steady. "Every gift you got, I bought with his life."
"I made a choice. Him or you." He finally looks at you. "I chose you."
You're on your feet, backing away. Marcus. Your Marcus. Who had promised you would figure it out together, yet died screaming while you hid.
"I let him die. There's a difference."
"There's no difference! He trusted you! I trusted you!"
"And that trust kept you alive!" He stands, and there's something terrible in his face.
"You think I wanted this? I made an impossible choice, and I chose the person I could save!"
"You don't get to decide that!"
"That's exactly what a mentor does!" His voice cracks. "We decide who gets the medicine and who bleeds out. Every gift is a choice, and every choice means someone else doesn't get one."
Tears stream down your face. "Why him? Why not me?"
Haymitch stops. The anger drains out of him.
"Because I saw you," he says quietly. "That first day. You flinched at everything, couldn't hold a knife, had no chance. And I thought she's going to die. Like all the others."
He takes a step closer. You don't move.
"But then I kept watching, I saw you practice with that fish hook until your fingers bled. Not because you thought you'd win, but because you refused to go down easy."
His hand hovers near your face, not quite touching.
"Marcus was strong. But he would've fought fair, and fair fighters die. You." His voice drops. "You were a survivor. And I couldn't let that go to waste."
"So you sacrificed him. For me."
"And you never told me. You let me blame myself."
"Because you needed to grieve. And because." He hesitates. "Because I knew you would never forgive me. And I couldn't lose you too."
You stare at him. This broken young man who murdered your first love to save your life. Who kept the secret while you drowned in guilt. Who stands before you now with his sins laid bare.
You should hate him. You want to hate him.
"You're a monster," you whisper.
"You killed the boy I loved."
"And you think I will just forgive you? Fall into your arms?"
Haymitch shakes his head. "No. I think you'll hate me forever, and I'll deserve it." He meets your eyes.
"But I would do it again. A thousand times. Because you're alive. That's the only equation that matters to me."
Your fist connects with his chest. You hit him again, and again, and he just stands there.
Then you're crying, great heaving sobs, and somehow his arms are around you and you're clinging to him like he's the only solid thing left.
"I'll never forgive you."
His arms tighten. "I won't."