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girls2gods

Jul 18

Chapter Twenty-One, Ready to Suffer, Ready to Hope

If The Sun Don’t Rise Series Masterlist

Chapter Twenty

Pairing: Haymitch Abernathy x Everdeen!reader, Implied BIPOC!reader

✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶

Haymitch decides he will not survive sobriety.

The kind Nurse Esper said it would peak around day three. She isn’t remotely kind, actually, but she’s the only one of them who will look him in his yellowed eyes like he’s more than an inconvenience. Even though he is, because District Thirteen isn’t equipped for drunkards coming off a decades-long bender, and it’d be easier leaving him to die in this room than help him dry out. But he saved their mockingjay, and he’s proved himself worthy to their cause, and Plutarch has made it clear they need him.

What use Haymitch serves by wasting away in fevers and chills, choking on nosebleeds and failing to aim his bile into the small bucket they’ve left at his bedside, he doesn’t know.

He does know Nurse Esper was wrong. It only gets worse on the fourth day.

Though the walls of his room are small, identical in their eggshell shade, they seem larger this morning—afternoon, or night?—and Haymitch feels like he’s falling endlessly through the clouded sky. He waits for the impact, or for yesterday’s claustrophobia to return full force, and instead, all he gets is that incessant itching all over, which convinces him a horde of bugs has made a nest on him. He paws at his neck, chest, arms, and legs, as best he can through the gauze they taped around his hands to stop him from tearing his skin apart like he wants.

His mouth is dry, despite having water forced down some twenty minutes ago, and his tongue has shriveled up like a dead flower. Haymitch has scratched his throat raw; metal climbs up the lining until he tastes it in his mouth, a byproduct of all the yelling he’s done in the dead of night and height of day. He’s sure he has more in him, but right now, he’s falling again, and that’s more pleasant than the itching. Than the feeling of being turned inside out.

The most fragile pieces of him are displayed on the outside to be spat on with every too bright clang of trays and too loud flicker of lights. Every one of his senses is jumbled up, and every thought is muddled like he’s still on the alcohol, but he’s not. And that’s the worst part—there is no purpose to any of this besides reacquainting his mind with his body. A necessity Haymitch has dedicated his life to running from.

Not only will he not survive this, but Haymitch realizes he envies Chaff for not needing to. Oh, and how Chaff teases him relentlessly for his suffering when day six rolls around, after Nurse Esper takes his vitals and brings in the head doctor.

Haymitch would’ve thought living with the ghosts for so long would make him immune to them now. It hasn’t, and the sequence always starts the same.

Their wails are loud, healthy, and familiar even though he’s never heard them before. They wake him when the sun sets and his wing of the hospital is empty save for the two night nurses. But they aren’t trained to soothe a pair of dying twins the same way they don’t know what to do with Haymitch when he begins to shout and writhe on his bloodied cotton blankets. Easier to ignore all three of them.

Haymitch wishes he could. They have no names for him to call, and their cries are only getting louder. He tries to reach for them with frail hands that are better suited to cradle bottles and not babies.

“They’re all right now, son.” It’d be easier to believe his pa if he were still a kid, but the blood is on his sheets and the walls are dripping with it.

Droplets pool onto the floor in a puddle, pattering like the saline bag the night nurse comes in to attach to his veins. He tells her to do something about the walls and his sisters, but she ignores him until he makes good use of the barf bucket.

In the wake of the crimson, the eggshell turns into a burnt orange. Mags perches on the chair in the far corner of the room. Haymitch asks her what he can do to make the spores on her face and neck better, but each time she tries to speak, a piece of her evaporates into the fog that took her. Eventually, there’s nothing of her left besides the pain in his chest.

Wiress spouts riddles in her place. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” And when Haymitch can’t answer, the slit above her collarbone blows right open.

Maysilee’s throat wound is nearly matching, the hole at the base of it oozing with blood. It matches the dead ladybugs in her hair, and Haymitch dry heaves at the sight. She teases him for it each time. “C’mon, Itchy. You’ve been around the Capitol long enough—surely, you’ve seen worse.”

“He’s looking pretty bad himself.” Wyatt frowns at the foot of his bed, but they’re in the same boat. Panache’s sword makes a home in his stomach, the tipped blade pointing right at Haymitch. “She said it’d peak on day four, and you’re already a week in. You don’t need me telling you your odds of living to see the sunrise.”

No, Haymitch doesn’t, because he will not survive this nor does he want to. There is no point to wanting things here, where his sun cannot reach him. Where there is no warmth and no melodies to sing him to sleep. For all that Haymitch searches for you in the space between Wyatt and Maysilee, the vacancy condemns him to hold on longer.

“Cold,” Haymitch wheezes when the head doctor comes in with a notebook and questions instead of a blanket like he asked.

“They say you have a fever,” he says, cool-toned like the groups of medical types Haymitch hears outside his door.

It’s just fevers, it’s just nosebleeds, it’s just an old drunk incapable of riding it out. He’s lucky he hasn’t seized yet, or dropped dead completely, or gone insane.

Haymitch is so very lucky.

Over a cacophony of chittering, Ampert calls for help from Haymitch and Beetee before he chokes out, “You said we’d beat the odds.”

“You said you’d be right back,” cries Wellie, head rolling off her shoulders and landing by Silka’s. Tears spill out of the gap where her eye once was, and Haymitch stammers out apologies to both.

He said, he said, he said, so many things.

Sid and Ma repeat each word, each empty promise of his, back to Haymitch. Their burnt flesh clogs his nose and steals his voice. They scream for him like they have in all his nightmares before. The only difference now is that Burdock is right there, attempting to put out the fire only to get caught in it himself.

It’s during one of those conversations between the robots who should’ve learned better about running their mouths that Haymitch learns the news about Twelve.

“Have you seen the new refugees?”

“They brought kids with them. More bodies, but more mouths to feed, too.”

“That’s not even half of them. Might be a good thing that the others were all killed in the bombing.”

Haymitch bangs his head against the wall, earning gasps from the other side of the door. For the rest of the morning, before they give in and enter with a sedative to shut him up, he begs them to stab the needle in his arteries. Or to give him a bottle. Whichever stops his heart first.

Pinned down by his weightlessness, Haymitch can’t do a thing but yell at Burdock to run, to leave before he burns too. Burdock never listens, but the fire dies out, leaving them both to a meadow of ash and blackened skies where his song has free rein to suffocate Haymitch in turn.

It’s sooner than later that I’m six feet under

It's sooner than later that you'll be alone

So who will you turn to tomorrow, I wonder?

“I don’t wanna hear this,” Haymitch tells Burdock, choking on the soot in his lungs. He can’t hear this, and he can’t see her again—the rainbow girl who isn’t you on that Capitol television. Burdock sings louder, soulful as the mockingjays and furious as he should be over having his twin lost, his family torn, and his little girl made into a pawn of war. There’s no mistaking his agony for anything else, or Haymitch’s role in causing it.

Lenore Dove picks up where Burdock left off, exacting in the message she leaves for Haymitch. He left her to face the gallows alone. He can handle a song.

“Do you want to know what it felt like, Haymitch?” she asks, face full of sorrow over the deaths of her people and her dreams of a different world. “To have my neck broken like my heart.”

Haymitch shakes his head no, but she meant it rhetorically and tells him what he doesn’t want to know in excruciating detail. The burn of the rope, the pressure to her pulse point, the shooting pain of Tam Amber’s sobs. He hears them for himself, under the taunt of Burdock’s voice as he returns to finish the last lines.

The resulting fracture lodges itself with the rest of Haymitch’s rot. It’s the only place inside him that hasn’t been scraped raw, a twisted safe haven for the worst parts of him to hibernate. From his heightened nerves to the shame he’s racked up to the wicked, vile grief that ravages him anew. All of them twined together at the base of his ribcage like the roots of a tree.

His rotten tree is an ugly thing with no bright red leaves or branches to climb. No color, no life, and the absence of both, which he should be used to by now, is sharper than he’s known it to be. Even in the once radiant woods of Twelve, everything is loudly barren.

You're still angry with Haymitch, so he can’t see your face. At most, he catches the angles of your shadow in the glaring sun, which is fine by him. Throw him scraps, scold him until his ears fall off, haunt him however you see fit. Just haunt him. It’s what he’s asked for since you left, isn’t it?

Haymitch mouths your name, thinks he says it out loud too, but there’s no sound besides the blood rushing to his head and the shattering of glass.

Steam explodes out of the aftermath, following the current of your hair as it blows around you. Curling around your shadow like a noose, the steam does little to stop you from bending down for a scoop of hot chocolate.

“No!” Haymitch croaks, suddenly seven and fourteen and sixteen all over again. Suddenly made to confront each age of innocence and fault and all the years in between. “It’s poisoned! You have to—” He stammers and falls lurching forward to get to you. “Drop it!”

You don’t, because you’re angry, and you’re starving, and you’re desperate for something Haymitch hasn’t remembered to feel in so long.

“Please drop it,” he begs, shutting his eyes and opening them again, the same force pinning him to the floor at once prying them open. He calls out your name softer, deciding in his panic that’s the only way to get through to you, and he receives your back in response. “You can’t—it’ll kill you.”

His rot buckles under the burden of the boy he was before the Games and the consequences of the man he’s become since. There’s no safe haven for the excruciating, stubborn pain, and it spills out of him in tears. He cries for a bottle, for death, for you.

“It’ll kill you,” Haymitch repeats, sobbing. You don’t care to hear him, or maybe he’s just not trying hard enough. He could scream louder, or bargain with you, or wrench the poison out of your grasp and send it far, far away.

But it’s already in you; already in him.

Your stomach is coated in decay, dripping onto the glass and down your fingers. Glass, not a knife. Your fingers, not Maritte’s. They’re yours, and you know that. You’ll die, and you know that.

Haymitch pleads with you anyway, his effort ragged and strained. “Don’t do this, sunshine. Please.”

By the time he wakes up in his bed again, you’re gone for good. He’s tied down by restraints, which draws a startled, hollow laugh out of him. Feels like a waste of energy and supplies. Where else would he go? The walls are bleeding again, his sisters are wailing, and there’s no place for Haymitch but here.

✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶

Somewhere between the second and third week, his ghosts turn over a new leaf.

They aren’t in a forgiving mood, but they aren’t vengeful, or even fully resentful anymore. Sadness is what Haymitch finally ascribes to them. He realizes it during Mags’s last visit, while she soothes him through the nausea, her face coated in the same ointment he fought tooth and nail to send to his kids in the arena. She watches him with sunken eyes, and when she goes, patting his hand goodbye, she leaves her sorrow behind for the others.

Anger is easier to feel for himself and to accept from them. Their sadness—their resignation, which extends to Haymitch as much as to themselves—is rough against the skin and harder to stomach. It’s their version of grace, which is different from forgiveness but a kindness just the same.

Maybe they’re tired of stewing in the substitute emotion of anger and letting it do the work of moving on for them. Maybe they realize it’ll punish him more to stop their cruelty. Maybe Haymitch is tired, too. So very tired, he lets his ghosts be kind, and lets their kindness hurt.

Haymitch welcomes the sting Chaff and Seeder bring to their shared corner during his weekly check-up, when the good doctor comes in to see if he’s died yet. Maysilee’s frozen fingers check his forehead for fever most evenings, drawing acidic tears out of him when he finally notices her throat’s been stitched up. Wyatt isn’t wounded anymore either, as he watches over the little ones, every dove and every Newcomer, in the springtime meadow. Once is all Haymitch needs to see of them together for it to break him clean in two.

Those that never come back, he doesn’t call for. He has his own mind fill in the mysteries—Ma and Sid holding each other fearfully, Hattie’s heart giving out on her, Wiress’s eyes twitching into lunacy—but he doesn’t pull them out of whatever resolution they’ve found. He doesn’t try to summon them.

And if he knew any better, if he weren’t a rotting hole of a person, he’d stop trying to summon you too. Haymitch can’t help himself or his selfishness or the breath that gives life to all the dead parts of him that still have so many questions and wants. He can blame sobriety and the lucidity it brings, but even when every bit of him was good and numb, alive but dead, he wanted more than he should.

So he doesn’t stop asking for you, and waiting for answers, or even a reminder of how he let you down in every way a person can be. He asks and waits and cries, and the only thing that gets him to calm down in these fits of despair is Lenore Dove’s tune box.

Her eyes don’t meet his, turned down to the keys over which her fingers glide like the wings of her namesake bird in the breeze. The quiet of her playing, devoid of bitterness, soothes him. Comforts him more than he has any right to accept from her.

The notes flit into lyrics. Tam Amber kicks them off as he did all those years ago. Lenore Dove’s soft lilt and Barb Azure’s low warmth float alongside him. Together, they lull Haymitch to sleep while singing of sunflowers.

With his forgiving heart on his sleeve, Burdock’s soot-covered face is there when Haymitch wakes. He isn’t singing, isn’t blended into the backdrop of the meadow, and like the others before him, isn’t carrying a lick of anger in his soul-searching gaze.

Haymitch blinks slowly, hoping childishly each time he does that Burdock will be gone. It’s one thing for his ghosts to have reined in their vengeance, another to have accepted the lost Covey’s song, but whatever Burdock brings with him now isn’t something Haymitch can take.

Though he’s the same age as he was the last Haymitch saw him in the Hob, Burdock’s salt-speckled hair has grown well past his shoulders. It unnerves Haymitch to see Burdock settled into adulthood yet carrying the possibilities of youth—a contradiction that shouldn’t fit together so seamlessly—and all he can say is, “I’m sorry.”

Burdock frowns and leans back in the chair at Haymitch’s bedside. “You’ve told me dozens of times already, Hay. It’s time for you to pick up a new tune.”

“It’s my fault,” Haymitch mutters, hearing Burdock and choosing not to listen. That’s the cycle they’ve established between them the last Burdock’s hair was this long, so why quit it now? He focuses on the freshest failure, the one without years of resentment built in, the one he’s certain Burdock is here to talk about. “She’s too young for what I roped her into.”

At the mention of his little girl, the ease in his eyes dissipates into anguish. Even though the symptoms of withdrawal have finally begun to subside, Haymitch is certain he’s imagining the lack of betrayal on Burdock’s face. “Yes, she is. But I can’t fault you for saving her in whatever way you could.”

“You telling me you ain’t pissed?” he asks skeptically.

“I’m saying you give yourself too much credit.” Burdock clicks his teeth, and the overhead lights seem to flicker in response. “You’re doing your part, Hay, and you got a lifetime to make things right with both of them.”

Maybe, so long as Haymitch manages to get one of them back from Snow and the other through this war alive. “I never wanted a lifetime.” Not the one he’s been dealt.

“You got one anyway. Don’t take it for granted.”

Haymitch rolls onto his back. Looking at Burdock for too long strains his eyes more than the fluorescents. Poor imitation that they are. He squints up at the dome of light, waits for it to blind him, to make his vision spotty enough to turn to Burdock again. “Is…she happy over there?” As his vision quickly fades back, Haymitch can see Burdock expected some variation of his question, and he almost seems pleased Haymitch isn’t skirting around it. He can’t even if he tried, with the words spilling right out of him now in a pathetic murmur. “She won’t come to me. Won’t let me follow.”

“For good reason.” Burdock doesn’t say more for a long stretch, laying his palms flat on his lap. He glances at the ceiling, and Haymitch’s head snaps in the same direction, a part of him instinctively assuming Burdock is searching for you to impart whatever riddled wisdom he seeks. The difference between Burdock and Haymitch is one of them has access to you, and the other you’ve shunned for said good reason.

“You know,” Burdock finally begins, “just because we aren’t here to live life doesn’t mean we can’t see it. I see every day through both my girls’ eyes. Through Asterid’s. You may not believe it, but she’s here, seeing through yours, too.”

Beneath the rot, where a maple red heart beats unevenly, a memory fizzles of Burdock at Haymitch’s side much like now, telling him death doesn’t mean the end of everything. Maysilee’s voice, repeating her grandmother’s words to him, echoing that old Covey song, sneaks up in agreement. “That’s nice, but not what I asked.”

Burdock rolls his eyes and decides against pulling out Haymitch’s saline bag. “I think my sister made a choice that you would’ve,” he says pointedly. “She’d probably be happier once you accepted it for yourself.”

Haymitch draws a painful breath, tries to send Burdock’s answer to where all the unwanted thoughts and ugly pieces belong with no success. It’d be easier with a bottle in hand, but they’ve already wrung him dry and split him open to exposure. He can’t avoid what he’s known in his bones, or heard through his ghosts, or felt in the colorless world you’ve damned him to all these years. And he can’t keep avoiding the pit in his off-kilter, maple red heart reserved for the person as precious as those he brought into his life.

Haymitch rubs his nose with the sleeve of his sweater. “Did you ever go to Cindy and Hemlock’s wedding?”

The distance between them, which will always exist in some way, is made less impossible by Burdock’s smile. “They had cake.”

Vanilla, Burdock says, and it’s the last detail Haymitch remembers when he comes to evenings later. A blurred figure stands at the doorway, shaped nothing like his old friend. But his mind’s great at playing tricks, and naive as it makes him, Haymitch would rather believe his ghost has lingered than deal with whatever mess is waiting outside this room.

“Burdie?”

“Guess again.” Plutarch takes a step forward, all smiles and olive branches Haymitch would rather snap in half. “You’re being discharged tomorrow.”

Haymitch sits up and drops his jaw in pretend shock. “Am I? They failed to mention that this morning when they brought the head doctor to clear me.”

Plutarch chuckles, relieved and amused. He scans the eggshell room for the damage he must’ve been expecting, but the cleaning crew discarded all the evidence yesterday while Haymitch was allowed a walk down the corridor. Haymitch resists the urge to say Plutarch should’ve visited sooner if he wanted to revel in the pigsty. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better, and right on time. Katniss has agreed to be our mockingjay.”

“Looks like you didn’t need me after all,” says Haymitch, though he is surprised she agreed so soon. He assumed it’d take months they didn’t have for her resolve to crack, but then again, he has no idea how exactly she’s been faring. The last he saw of her was when he passed her room on the way to his, half sedated himself but lucid enough to see the hatred in her empty eyes.

Plutarch crosses his arms. “She had a long list of demands in exchange for her compliance—I know you don’t want to hear this, but the resemblance is uncanny sometimes.”

Haymitch is well aware.

“Anyway,” Plutarch rattles on, “you should’ve seen Coin’s face.”

Ah, yes, the elusive President Alma Coin with whom Haymitch hasn’t had the displeasure of meeting yet. He doesn’t want to see her face, nor imagine it, if the personnel who’ve come in and out of here are any reflection of her governance. “I reckon the girl’s entitled to some demands.” Good on her for making them sing for their supper. Haymitch knows he’ll have his own hoops to jump through if he ever expects her to trust him again.

Plutarch hums in agreement. “One of them includes rescuing Peeta and the other captured victors from the Capitol.” A given, but again, Haymitch has to wonder how that’d be possible. Thirteen’s compassion surely won’t be fueling the supplies they’d need for that kind of mission any time soon. “He made a few appearances on Caesar’s show. Seemed unharmed.” For now. Haymitch swings his legs over the bed as Plutarch continues, “My point is we do still need you on this team, Haymitch. Katniss needs you.”

He stares at the chair where Burdock sat. He was right about Haymitch having a lifetime. Whether he wants one or not, whether he’ll get to keep it after this war or not. He’d like to bank on not, but that’s secondary to what his girl needs now. “Well, I’m being discharged tomorrow, aren’t I?”

“Great,” says Plutarch, nodding as he backs towards the door. Haymitch would also get a kick out of slapping the grin off his face—another thing that’ll have to wait. “Get some rest then. Tomorrow’s our first filming day.”

“Great,” Haymitch echoes dryly, and waits until the door shuts to fall back into bed.

Without the sedatives, without the numbness or the company of spirits outside his own wayward imagination, Haymitch has no idea what rest looks like. Different from distraction, that much he can say. He’s a miracle case. Sober and alive, and he hasn’t conjured anyone in days. A miracle still in the thick of his own personal hell. Still walking through the fire in the hopes it’ll soon take him too.

Haymitch fixates on the chair again, thinks about the lifetime he would’ve traded in a heartbeat for yours, and drifts off with a sorrow so spiteful he can only call it his own.

It’s only in dreamless sleep that the spite chips away little by little. The sorrow’s still there, and so is the shame, but with no company to keep, no nightmares to ward off, and no bottle to distract him from either, Haymitch doesn’t flinch awake from the nothingness. He doesn’t scramble when it turns into a song. Found in the blur of days past, and made real by that long lost, never forgotten melody of yours.

Are you, are you coming to the tree,

Where I told you to run,

So we’d both be free?

Strange things did happen here,

No stranger would it be,

If we met up at midnight

In the hanging tree.

You don’t show yourself to Haymitch beyond singing that forbidden song. Come morning, a gray jumpsuit and the bracelet that’d been confiscated when he was admitted is all that waits on the chair at his bedside. Detox has done a number on Haymitch, beaten him to a pulp, because the paralyzing urge to call you and beg for more glimpses hasn’t seized him yet. He gives it another minute, and when his chest sizzles, he accepts last night wasn’t a pitiful scrap on your end or a trick of his self-loathing mind.

Haymitch leaves it be as you meant it: the first sign of dawn in twenty-five years.

✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶

Properly rested and miserable, per Plutarch’s instructions, Haymitch dresses the part of a revolutionary, so he might as well fall back into the role of mentor too. What’s it matter that he’s not even forty-eight full hours out of the hospital and wants a drink so bad he might actually rip his own throat out? Doesn’t matter none, because no one else in this nation of robots has the aptitude to state the obvious: forcing Katniss into a box is exactly how their revolution dies.

After the headache of a morning spent convincing them of her limitations, piled onto an afternoon listening to his girl butcher their chance for freedom one bad line delivery after another, Haymitch is no mood to bury the hatchet with her. He needs to, though, if they’re ever going to get his boy back and pull this war off.

As Coin—expectedly as dull as the country she’s running—adjourns their meeting, Haymitch asks to speak to Katniss privately. She narrows her eyes at him, turns them into daggers when Coin agrees and the others file out. Gale lingers, the gentle angles of his family’s genes now forged into weapons by what he’s been through. He saved as many as he could from the bombing, Haymitch was told. What nightmares must the kid be wrestling behind his rageful shield?

Briefly, Haymitch searches for anything Blair might’ve left behind in his nephew. He shakes it off; there are more important things than nostalgia. "What are you worried about?" Haymitch motions accusingly to Katniss with the marker he used earlier. His eye is healed, and the scratches she left on his face have long since gone away, but the damage between them is a physical presence in the room nonetheless. "I'm the one who needs the bodyguard."

Katniss inhales sharply and looks at Gale, who still seems uncertain. She assures him, "It's okay."

Gale presses his lips together and leaves them to the purr of the ventilation system.

Sighing in sync with the room’s humming machinery, Haymitch sits across from Katniss. It takes him several attempts to finally look at her properly. She’s determined to be the model rebel, to do whatever it takes to save Peeta—Haymitch sees it clearly laid out before her. The same way he sees past her stone-faced shield, right into the shame that reflects his own. "We're going to have to work together again. So, go ahead. Just say it."

Katniss stares at the spot of the table in front of her. It doesn’t take her long to find her voice. "I can't believe you didn't rescue Peeta."

"I know," Haymitch replies instantly. What else is there to say? He broke his promise, went back on his end of their deal, and did so willingly. He’d apologize if she thought she’d want to hear it, or if he could say it out loud to her without sinking into himself. And that’s not going to bring Peeta back.

Katniss glances up at him. "Now you say it.”

Haymitch doesn’t hold back his own scorn. "I can't believe you let him out of your sight that night."

She nods, dropping her gaze again, and it kills him how small she sounds, exactly like she did when they made this drunken, unrealistic deal. Like you, damning him with your own binding yet breakable promises. But when she curls in on herself, the memory of you ripples like a reflection in water, making room for a present which is plenty painful in its own right.

“I play it over and over in my head,” she starts off, digging her fingers into her arms. “What I could have done to keep him by my side without breaking the alliance. But nothing comes to me."

"You didn't have a choice,” he says truthfully. If she stayed with Peeta, Johanna wouldn’t have gotten her tracker out, and she’d be in the Capitol too. If Haymitch hadn’t chosen her, both kids would be lost to him forever, and so would the revolution. And if he’d done things right the first time around… For everything that may have gone right if they’d done what they wanted, or thought they should’ve, there’s plenty that would’ve turned out worse. Katniss can’t wait as long as he did to realize it. “And even if I could've made Plutarch stay and rescue him that night, the whole hovercraft would've gone down. We barely got out as it was."

Hesitantly, she meets his eyes. Her own are red-rimmed and dragged down by sleepless nights. Haymitch says the only thing he knows can comfort her now: "He's not dead yet, Katniss."

"We're still in the game,” she murmurs, voice cracking on the last words.

"Still in. And I'm still your mentor." No matter how many people are now tasked with the impossible mission of keeping Katniss alive, the weight of it falls solely on Haymitch. Whatever the cost, he’s not giving up his job any time soon. He points his marker at her. "When you're on the ground, remember I'm airborne. I'll have the better view, so do what I tell you."

Although it was his idea, Haymitch feels less confident about sending Katniss into combat when she shrugs halfheartedly. "We'll see.”

Pain in the ass brat.

Katniss pushes up from her chair, and Haymitch does the same, giving her the go ahead to leave first. She stands frozen for a second, staring at some spot over Haymitch’s shoulder, and it’s all he can do not to react to the look she gets. The very one that crossed her steely expression after he busted her and Peeta for watching his Games, and occasionally popped up in the days that followed. No matter how subtle and how quick it appears, that look is loaded with the desire of knowledge in place of your presence in her life.

The look is a reminder to Haymitch, too. Peeta isn’t the only broken bridge between them.

Once she leaves without another word, Haymitch doesn’t stop himself from turning around. There’s no stopping the curdling in his stomach either, no matter how stupid he knows it is to have checked for you in the first place. He rubs his knuckles until they stop trembling, and walks out the door.

Plutarch waits on the other side with a set of plans and directives he wants Haymitch to communicate to Katniss. Did he emphasize how imperative it is that she stay out of any direct line of fire? Martyrdom is something they can work with, but she’s more valuable alive. It’s important Haymitch second all creative directives Plutarch doles out, too. After all, he is the “mockingjay whisperer.” What a load of crap.

Getting through that dense head of hers is a waste of energy, and Plutarch’s wilful ignorance on that front is tested hours later when Katniss reminds them just how stubborn and reckless she is. And thanks to her little stunt, Haymitch gets to pay a special visit to Beetee in Special Weaponry.

It makes no difference where he stands; the lights are dizzying and blinding in this room for all the wrong reasons. They’re even worse than those in the hospital wing, and Haymitch paces through the rows of weaponry to distract himself while Beetee whips out the alternative earpieces he asked for. It’s a marvel Thirteen’s arsenal is so well-stocked, along with the rest of the district.

A hospital wing with a range of staff, a handful of hovercrafts, and an entire floor dedicated to weaponry. They’ve done more than well for themselves over the last seventy-five years. Have downright flourished when compared to the rest of the districts, who’ve left to suffer under the Capitol’s thumb. Thirteen’s their ally now, Haymitch tells himself. And an overthrow of the Capitol, as his own history has shown, is far from straightforward. Besides, if the nurses’ loud mouths are to be trusted, they’ve had their fair share of challenges. Still, he never has gotten the hang of controlling his bitterness.

Haymitch fiddles with the headgear Beetee has laid out on his work desk. He’s not big on the idea of muzzling the girl. It’s bad enough he shoved her into this war. “Anything more permanent?”

Beetee nods and sets down a silver chip as small as a grain of bread. “Now this would have to be surgically implanted, but it would allow you to speak to Katniss at all hours of the day.”

“Even better.” Haymitch doesn’t want it to come to this—and as the overhead lights grow impossibly brighter and Haymitch grows doubly nauseous, he thinks about those Capitol surgeons whose teeth he almost knocked out to keep them from “fixing” Katniss. He’d be no better than them if he followed through. But…he’s not above scaring her into being less reckless with her life. “Thank you, Beetee.”

When the thanks leaves his mouth, genuine as it is, Haymitch’s head spins. He realizes he hasn’t even asked Beetee how he’s been, or offered condolences for Wiress, or made any effort to check in on him now that he’s been out of detox. “I didn’t get the chance to tell you earlier.”

“Oh,” Beetee brushes him off with a wave and wheels back behind his desk. “I should be thanking you, too.”

“We’re not out of it yet,” Haymitch reminds him, because it’s important Beetee knows that. He has to know Haymitch has done nothing to warrant his gratitude in the first place. Beetee is the one who helped save his girl, who has continued to trust Haymitch in spite of the insurmountable loss that’s resulted from the moment he walked up to that potato booth with you. Then again, Haymitch has continued to trust Beetee in the face of his own insurmountable loss.

“No,” Beetee agrees, glancing up at Haymitch with a glint of warmth. Haymitch tries his best not to, but his mind wanders to Burdock and his life after death, to Lenore Dove and her angels, to you and your talking birds. He holds Beetee’s gaze, and doesn’t flinch when he catches Ampert looking back. What a strong pair of eyes to see through.

Beetee manages a hint of a smile, and he adds, “Not yet.”

Not ever, if Katniss doesn’t listen for once in her damn life. Haymitch thinks he at least manages to get through to her when he pays her a visit in the hospital. Sitting idly by her bedside for a whole afternoon pays off in lunch and her agreement, however begrudging, to save him from a near heart attack by wearing her earpiece.

On his way out of the hospital, Haymitch passes the corridor which held him not so long ago. And when Plutarch summons him to Command to discuss his next intended propo, a part of Haymitch wants to retreat into that eggshell purgatory, shut off from the world and its demands of him.

“Cressida wants to do unscripted interviews on the bombing in Twelve,” says Plutarch, pretending not to see the noticeable wince Haymitch gives in response. He hasn’t allowed for much wallowing on the destruction of Twelve since he first heard the news through clogged ears and a thinly constructed door. Plutarch relayed more details the day Haymitch was discharged, but even then, he cared more to focus on Katniss than to take in what Snow had done to his people. To ask of the survivors outside those he’d seen for himself.

Plutarch sits forward in his chair at the head of the table. He gives away even less than he usually does down here, even though it’s only the two of them in this room. Haymitch figures he has to if he means to stay in Coin’s good graces. She may be fighting for their side, but he reckons there’s more to her behind that head of platinum and a commitment to equality. Enough for Plutarch to fall back on his habit of ass-kissing. “That, of course, requires us to actually be in District Twelve.”

Cut to the chase, why don’t you? Haymitch feigns well-meaning ignorance. “Y’all have a safe trip then.”

“Haymitch,” Plutarch starts off with his usual I-want-something-from-you friendliness, “You should come with us.”

Should, he says like he hasn’t already put it in Haymitch’s schedule. “I can’t.”

“Cressida wants to focus on Katniss and Gale, but it’d be great if we could get you on camera, too,” says Plutarch, drumming his fingers on the table.

Haymitch scoffs. “Nobody wants to see me in one of those things.”

“I can guarantee—”

“Unless you can guarantee me a bottle, Plutarch, I won’t do it.” Already, his chest is tightening and the threat of bile is clawing at his throat. Haymitch hasn’t had a home in what seems like an eternity, and he as good as turned his back on his district. But it was his district. His home, even if it hasn’t felt like it in a long time. And he sees it all now—every place where he grew and loved, every porch he ever sat on with lost friends, every corner you touched—buried under rubble like those in the worst of his nightmares. “I can’t face it.”

Plutarch waits a moment and is surely disappointed when Haymitch gives him no choice but to concede. “All right,” he sighs. “We’ll handle it.”

“I have full faith in you,” says Haymitch, offering a mock grin through his trembling breath.

The funny thing about avoidance, which Haymitch should’ve learned with his time in detox, is it doesn’t work in the long run. It’s a child’s luxury. Everything comes back around eventually.

While the camera crew and Boggs’s squad accompany them to Twelve, Haymitch is scheduled to assist Beetee in Special Weapons all day. Assist is used loosely, as Haymitch is better served as a soundboard for Beetee to bounce ideas off of. Katniss’s friend is the one who’s taken to this side of the war.

Haymitch keeps his communication device by his side at all times, checking for updates on the crew’s movements, even as they’re herded into the cafeteria for lunch. Mushed peas, stew, and a roll of bread make up his plate. Haymitch has had worse, so who’s he to complain? His appetite is lost to him anyway when he spots a recognizable pair of wrinkled, disapproving eyes attached to a head of short gray hair.

Haymitch assumed Clerk Carmine was in the group of Seam folk who managed to survive—hoped for it, just as he hoped he’d never have to see the man again in his life. He’s aged, clearly, but he stares at Haymitch from three tables down with the same closed off indignation as the day they buried you.

Somewhere in the woods, maybe deep enough that your grave, and Lenore Dove’s, were untouched by the bombs. What of Burdock’s? He was buried in Twelve’s cemetery, and Haymitch knows because he woke up in it months after his death and found a freshly dug patch of dirt in the Everdeen plot. A grave without a body, but did Katniss know of the Everdeen’s funeral traditions? Whatever it was Burdock and Sorrel dug for you in lieu of your coffin.

What about your people’s funeral song? Or your grave? Something in Haymitch tells him no, Katniss doesn’t know. Burdock was the last living person with the knowledge of where to find you. Not counting the scornful old man sitting three tables across from Haymitch.

His legs nearly give out when he stands and mutters, “Be right back.”

Beetee’s voice sounds muffled, like he’s underwater. Or Haymitch is the one beneath the waves, and he’s drowning under his curiosity of whether or not the resting places of his family and friends and tributes were collateral. He’s suffocating in this too small cafeteria with no air and no sun.

He needs out of this room, this underground hellhole, this cycle of constant death and loss and no one to hate more than he hates himself. Except Snow, but he didn’t make Haymitch into anything he wasn’t already. A traitor, a liar, a coward who can’t even muster half a day of support for his girl without a bottle in his hand.

Rounding the hallway leading out of the cafeteria, Haymitch rubs a hand over his shirt pocket and presses down until he feels the metal leaving an imprint through the fabric. He’s so caught up in trying to erase the images of fire in his head that he nearly topples over her.

“Hi, Hay.”

Haymitch takes a large step back and blinks slowly, but Louella isn’t a ghost and closing his eyes won’t make her go away. His hands shake as he tugs on the collar of his jumpsuit. It’s too tight, and the room is too small, and he’s too sober for this. Much, much too sober.

Louella tries her hand at a smile, but it wobbles when she asks, “How are you?”

“Peachy,” he answers, immediately tasting acid. He forces his hands to stop shaking and manages to get out, “Sorry. How’re you?”

Louella brushes off his rudeness with a shrug. “It’s different from Twelve. Harder, but that might just be the circumstances of why we’re here.” She glances past his shoulder at the cafeteria doorway. “We’re still adjusting.”

Haymitch exhales slowly, gives his collar another tug, and feels his chest begin to loosen. We’re, as in her whole family. Not the McCoy clan—though he hopes and imagines they’re included—but the family she made for herself.

As if picking up on his train of thoughts, Louella supplies, “They’re at our table. Jack and the kids.”

In all the years she’s been married—how many exactly, Haymitch isn’t entirely sure—this is the first he’s heard her husband’s name. “How many of ’em you got?”

“Just two. Hewer and Bluebell.” Louella smiles proudly, just like those days she’d trail behind him wherever he went. She’s found her own path now. “Do you want to meet them?”

“No,” he says clumsily, the walls closing in on him again at the thought of sitting down with her family and meeting the children with no home. His eyes flicker to the space around them. “Not right now. I don’t—I have to—”

“It’s okay,” Louella cuts him off softly, if not disappointed. He doesn’t glance her way to find out. “Some other time.”

“Sure,” Haymitch says with no intent of ever following through.

And Louella must know that, but she doesn’t seem to mind the lie. She’s earnest and kind in the way she tells him, “It’s good to see you, Hay.”

The walls stop where they are. Haymitch looks at her as she is now, the hidden whites in her dark coils, the tough set in her eyes, the lines around her mouth that speak to a life happily built with a future yet to live. But she will. She’ll get to live it. “You too, sweetheart.”

Louella leaves Haymitch to pick up whatever’s left of his shattered will to do anything of real use. When he returns to his table, slots into his seat without a word to Beetee, and musters the courage to lift his head, Clerk Carmine is no longer in view. But you’re there, in the empty space meant to remind Haymitch the old man has every right to avoid him, not the other way around.

You’re there in the days that follow, too. Little traces of you, Burdock, and Lenore Dove woven into Plutarch’s footage of Katniss singing that same forbidden song you delivered in Haymitch’s dreams. Flashes of your dying breaths sneak up when he watches his boy’s blood splatter on white porcelain before the television turns to static.

And now, as Katniss crumbles over the stream of wilted red and pink roses, it’s all Haymitch can do not to picture your tears in the taunt of Snow’s sadistic trademark.

Katniss is a stumbling mess, and Haymitch meets her halfway when she asks for him. He catches her before she can trip over herself. However fraught things remain between them, there’s little worse than seeing her in pain like this.

"It's okay. It'll be okay, sweetheart." He guides her to a piece of broken marble and sinks onto it with her.

"I can't do this anymore," she cries, shaking like that ugly Calla look-alike she smuggled in for the little one.

"I know.” Haymitch wishes he didn’t.

Much like on the hovercraft, there is no talking Katniss down from her hysteria. The best Haymitch can do is hold her through it as she continues to panic. "All I can think of is,” she gasps, “what he's going to do to Peeta—because I'm the Mockingjay!"

"I know," he repeats and tightens his arms around her, rubbing her shoulders.

"Did you see? How weird he acted? What are they—doing to him?" She hyperventilates, her sentences broken and garbled by her sobs. Haymitch shushes her softly and manages to make out a final snippet of her despair: "It's my fault!"

He shakes his head, a fragment of his poorly patched heart chipping as she wails into his shoulder. She can’t hear him, and wouldn’t listen or believe it if she could. Haymitch didn’t; still doesn’t, really. Yet, he means it when he says it to her. “Sweetheart, you did everything you could.”

Katniss remains inconsolable, which offsets a meltdown from Finnick. Haymitch would go to him if he weren’t scared Katniss would fall straight through the ground the second he lets go. So he keeps his steady hold on her, even as the ground begins to feel unstable beneath his own feet. Even after they’ve sedated her. Only when they bring a gurney does he let her go, and walks her down to the hospital.

Asterid and Prim are both in the hallway when they arrive. Similar in their worry, distinct in how it shows up on their identical faces. Haymitch loathes looking at either one of them, and he’s managed to coast by with little interaction with them in the last weeks. Now, he can’t pretend not to notice Asterid’s glassy eyes and Prim’s scrunched up nose, the latter of which guts him as much as the echo of Katniss’s distress.

Prim is the one to speak up when a pair of nurses wheel Katniss past them into her designated room. She’s calm as she asks, “What happened?”

“She figured out Snow’s plans for Peeta. Freaked out.” Concise and to the point, as Haymitch prefers all conversation with this pair of Everdeens to be. He goes dizzy for a second when he notices the copper bluebird dangling from the little one’s neck. Last he saw of the thing was when he gave it to Tam Amber to bury it with you. But here it is, making a mockery of his best intentions. “She’ll be all right.”

Asterid nods, but the sorrow in her eyes is permanent. Haymitch doesn’t remember much about the year Burdock died, besides the forming of another pit in his heart and a matching one in his stomach when he saw his eldest girl in the reaping eligible crowd. He wasn’t any happier with the pair he got. Marigold and Ambrose, more Seam kids.

That aside, the year is a blur. But Haymitch doesn’t need to remember details to know Asterid’s sunkenness started with Burdock’s death and has persisted ever since. He can’t bear to linger on the thought, or to look at her at all, lest the image of her bloodied forehead creep up. Over the last year, Haymitch has thought to apologize for it more times than he can count.

He tried once, back around the time Gale was whipped. The house had gone quiet in the aftermath, and Haymitch was in the kitchen sniffing the alcohol they kept around for disinfection. When Asterid walked in, he nearly dropped the bottle, feeling shame and wondering where its origin came from before realizing it wasn’t the drinking he was ashamed of in her presence.

The words were forming on his tongue, long overdue, and she could probably sense it, too. Asterid always was the understanding type. He’d seen in during their youth—she knew what wounded souls needed before they could name it themselves. Which is why, Haymitch figures, she never held it against him when he couldn’t say them out loud. She just carried on in the kitchen, packed the medical supplies back under the sink counter, and left with a nod goodbye sent Haymitch’s way.

The same nod she gives him now as she crosses the doorway into Katniss’s room.

Prim stays put, and he can’t tell if she’s waiting for him to say more or to leave. Strangely, this kid’s harder to get a read on than Katniss. Stonefaced as she appears, his girl’s got a thousand tells for those who pay attention. Whatever turn Haymitch assumes Prim will take, she surprises him by choosing another. She’s her mother’s kid in looks and prowess, but she didn’t go without inheriting a thing or two from her pa’s branch.

Mystery that the kid is, like those before her, Haymitch doesn’t expect her to say, “We talked about it in the bunker. I told her Snow would do whatever it took to break her. I didn’t think…”

“She would’ve put it together eventually,” says Haymitch, because it’s true and because guilt doesn’t suit anyone so young.

“Probably,” Prim agrees in a murmur. “Katniss is really strong, but…” A wisdom beyond her years of life settles in her merchant blue eyes. “There’s only so much a person can take alone. Thanks for looking after her.”

Haymitch tears his eyes away from the crop of yellow hair the same shade as her namesake flower. The glass or the primrose? Where did you land? The confusion’s still there, even knowing the answer. He looks back down at her and decides on how to deflect when a meow sounds from his feet.

More orange, less beige, but just as picky as Calla. The cat prances straight into its owner’s arms. Haymitch scratches his temple. “Does that have medical clearance?”

“Buttercup doesn’t do well staying cooped up in one place, especially after the bombings,” she says. Right. She’s survived two of them now. She goes wide-eyed as she clutches the bag of fur closer to her. “Don’t tell any of the nurses you saw him.”

Haymitch holds up his hands and shrugs. “I don’t make it a habit of chatting up the wardens.”

Prim smiles, reflecting the familiar disposition of someone born on the sunny side of life. “Thanks again.”

Rather than brush her off, Haymitch chooses not to respond at all. As Prim turns to Katniss’s room, Buttercup hisses in his direction.

“Feeling’s mutual, furball.” But Haymitch takes that as his cue to get the hell out. Katniss is in fine hands now. He only returns to the hospital a day later, when he has good news to deliver to her for once.

Equal parts good and bad really, considering her anticipated reaction to Gale’s role in Boggs’s rescue mission. All that manages to calm Katniss down when she begins to work herself into another frenzy is the promise to find her a job of some kind. Which is exactly what Haymitch does for both Katniss and Finnick, and Katniss manages to do well filming the footage they need to detract attention from the squad’s break-in.

Until Plutarch gets it in his head to push Finnick in front of the camera.

They’re above ground, the smell of wilted roses crushed beneath their boots, the air open and endless around them. But Haymitch can hardly breathe through his fuming.

Finnick reveals every sordid secret, weaponizes every dangerous detail whispered about their president and government, and exposes the worst of the Capitol’s crimes for Panem to hear. Detached as he is through his recounting, Haymitch can hear the tremor of his breath and see the twitch of his fingers in search of a knot to tie, or a noose to hang around his neck.

Long after the crew heads inside, Katniss stays slumped on the same piece of pillar where she broke into sobs not two days ago. Haymitch takes a seat next to her. He picks up on the hint of worry in her tone as she asks him, "Is that what happened to you?"

"No,” he assures her, ignoring the voice that chimes, oh but it could’ve been. “My mother and younger brother were dead two weeks after I was crowned victor. Because of the stunt I pulled in the arena. And you already know what happened to my—” Haymitch stops himself, a surge of cowardice forbidding him from putting a name to what you were to him, and continue to be. Every description suddenly feels flat. And he doesn’t have the strength to explain that, to talk about you so openly with her of all people, right now. “Snow had no one to use against me."

Katniss doesn’t press on the subject of your relationship. "I'm surprised he didn't just kill you.”

"Oh, no. I was the example. The person to hold up to the young Finnicks and Johannas and Cashmeres. Of what could happen to a victor who caused problems," says Haymitch. And how fortunate he was to have escaped the fate befallen desirable, popular victors. All it cost was everyone he loved. "But he knew he had no leverage against me."

"Until Peeta and I came along," she says softly, staring at the side of his head. Haymitch doesn’t acknowledge her. He can’t deny it, as much as his instinct is to. And he can’t admit, no matter how true it may be, that after the better part of two decades wishing for death to deliver him to you, they gave him something to live for again. He still doesn’t turn when, after a long beat of listening to nothing, she murmurs more to herself than to him, “It was real for you.”

Maybe one day he’ll tell her just how real it was. How his love for you has never dimmed a day; how a piece of him was buried in the earth with you; how he carries you and every person he’s lost in the forefront of his mind. He’ll tell her the truth about what you did in the Games together, and how he’s spent year after year seeking a free world with no real hope. Until she and his boy came along. One day, maybe, he’ll have the courage to say everything out loud.

“How have you endured it, Haymitch?” Katniss asks, more hesitant.

He hasn’t is the truth, and the liquor is no more than a bandaid over a bullet wound. He echoes the same sentiment he told her back when they came to their truce. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“You do now.”

Underneath her whisper, floating into the air above them, your own rings, completely distinct in both rhyme and rhythm this time. “Don’t follow.”

Those two damning words, which Haymitch has never been able to erase, no matter how many bottles he’s chased, will always sting to some extent. They’ll always come with the memory of your empty eyes and frozen skin, condemning him to a lifetime without you. But as Haymitch sits with them, allows them to soak down into his heart, they don’t sound quite like a punishment anymore.

“Yeah,” he sighs, sparing Katniss a glance, “I guess I do.”

✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶

For five fleeting seconds, behind the tiers of a blue-green sea and frosted dolphins, Haymitch catches a glimpse of his boy again. From the doorway, he points to the border of the bottom tier. “Missed a spot there.”

Peeta’s head swivels to check the spot, and he narrows his eyes at Haymitch. “You’ve been told you’re an ass plenty of times before.”

“Plenty,” Haymitch agrees, guilt lapping at his insides. Katniss’s accusations on the night he allowed Peeta to slip out of his grasp have been playing on a loop in his head since they got him back. They’re fresher than your hazy snipes. “But go ahead. Lay it on me.”

Peeta sets down his piping bag, the cuffs around his wrist clanging against the metal table. Out of the corner of his eye, Haymitch sees the guards stationed around them tense in preparation. The doctors warned Haymitch not to agitate Peeta, but the boy’s already chained to his work station and he’s earned the right not to be treated like broken glass. An instinct that is admittedly difficult to shed.

Peeta’s nose flares as he glowers at Haymitch. “You should’ve told me about the plan.”

“Maybe I should’ve.” Haymitch doesn’t see any way in which that option would’ve played out better. Knowledge is a curse as much as it is a privilege sometimes. “But I couldn’t risk the consequences of you knowing everything.”

“The consequences?” Peeta seethes. The vibrancy of the colored frosting dims with his anger. Warranted but no less cutting. “I’d say what happened was consequence enough, wouldn’t you?”

He’d been prepared to receive Peeta’s ire, to see the damage that was done to him and reckon with his role in all of it. What they’ve done to his boy is a peculiar torture Haymitch couldn’t have imagined. “I’d say so, too.”

“Then it made no difference in the end,” says Peeta, teetering between resentment and acceptance. Haymitch expects him to fall one way or another, maybe yell or fight against his restraints to throw a punch Haymitch’s way. He takes another step closer as Peeta continues in a sneer, “You lied to me, kept me in the dark, and chose her for nothing.”

Along with the doctors’ reminders to steer on the side of neutrality with Peeta, Haymitch was under orders to avoid direct mention of Katniss. Peeta hasn’t had a meltdown over her in days—not since he recalled his memory of Burdock singing “The Hanging Tree” around town—and they’d like to keep it that way. Haymitch figures if the boy brought her up first, it’s fair game. He sucks his teeth and taps his fingers to his head. “I know your mind’s still foggy, but you can’t get mad at me for that last one. You asked me to pick her.”

“I remember,” says Peeta, and Haymitch nearly reels back in surprise. Although Prim’s suggested treatments have helped in the reversement of Peeta’s hijacking, there are still large gaps in his recollection.

They don’t know what else to call it. It’s more than an injury or an illness or a case of mental disorientation. And it’s not a death, technically. But the Peeta that went into that arena is not the one who stands before Haymitch now, and it sure feels like he died. He hasn’t though. Peeta is here, and he’s alive, and Haymitch is no less responsible for him than he was before this. More so, if anything, given anyone who might’ve served as his guardian is dead.

Now’s not about imagining his old schoolmates—and nice, generous Oliver Schmidt in particular—turning to ash. So Haymitch erases the pictures popping up in his head. He doesn’t respond either, giving Peeta the floor to work through what he needs to say.

“You said it’d destroy her not to save me,” Peeta murmurs, and when his eyes drop to the cake, he seems caught in a daze of realization. “You were talking about yourself, weren’t you? You and that girl from the tape who looks like her.”

Of all the things for Peeta to remember. Haymitch hadn’t been ready for him to bring up Burdock’s lulling voice when he had, and he certainly isn’t prepared for the subject of you right now. He shoves his hands into his pockets and struggles against the newfound heaviness in the room. “Other way around, actually.”

Peeta mutters something under his breath and shakes his head. “I don’t think there’s much of a resemblance anymore. That girl wasn’t cruel. How’d she end up with you?”

“Beats me.” You would’ve been much better suited for this conversation than Haymitch is. Really, he used up all his luck in becoming yours.

“I want to see Katniss,” Peeta decides, picking up the piping bag again. “I want to see if she’s as torn up as you said she’d be.”

Haymitch sighs and looks over his shoulder at the one-way mirror. “I don’t know if I can make that happen right now, Peeta.”

“You owe me,” Peeta says, parroting the desperation that overcame him on the day he burst into Haymitch’s kitchen with a kinder yet equally taxing demand. “Maybe you made good on what I asked for back then, but you left me to fend for myself again. I figure you owe me for that, at least.”

And like that day in his kitchen, Peeta has Haymitch cornered. “Look, from now on, I won’t hide things from you. But I can’t promise to bring Katniss down.” It won’t take much to get Katniss to agree to talk to him—whether Peeta is really up for it is a different case. So is the task of convincing the doctors to give Katniss visiting privileges.

Peeta focuses on the cake, pipes a U shape that’ll surely turn into a ship. Seems a little like the underside of a duck for now. Between the seriousness of Peeta’s concentration and the illusive U, Haymitch thinks of you and your doodling, of Sid and his fuzzy newborn hair. Haymitch takes a deep breath at the same time as Peeta. His boy looks up. “No more secrets.”

Haymitch holds his hands out in surrender. “I don’t have any more up my sleeve.”

“I’ll have to wait until I see you mean it.”

“Fair enough.” There’s a subtle tap on the mirror, signaling his time’s up. Haymitch waits for another handful of seconds to pass and another knock to say, “Nice job on the cake, kid. Finnick and Annie’ll like it.”

Peeta murmurs, “I hope so.”

On the other side of the one-way mirror, Haymitch watches his boy pick up a new piping bag and frost purple flowers onto the top tier. Nearly the same shade as a larkspur.

✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶

Freedom doesn’t come easy to Haymitch.

When they land for the surrender, which isn’t much of one in the wake of the final bombing, Haymitch doesn’t care about anything else but getting to his clever, stubborn, badly burnt kids. Even seeing Snow bound in chains and dragged down his own hallways, catching his eye before he’s turned down a corner to his cell, elicits only a brief satisfaction. Brief but mighty, because what poetic justice it is to be the one looking down instead of up. To have toppled the invincible President Coriolanus Snow from his throne.

As the satisfaction lessens and his concern for Katniss and Peeta returns full-force, all Haymitch can hear is the sadistic chime of the man who wrung every bit of love out of his life. “What a well-earned victory, Mr. Abernathy.”

Well-earned indeed. The war is over and won, but what did their victory cost? Finnick, little Primrose, and hundreds more Haymitch tells himself not to think of yet.

Plutarch assures Haymitch on the day before Katniss is discharged from the hospital that they’ll be memorialized in some way for their contributions to the war efforts. As will the tributes taken by the Games. “I’m only brainstorming now, but it’s worth keeping in mind.”

Haymitch, fuming silently, refrains from telling Plutarch exactly what he thought of that idea. He can’t talk about it with Katniss fast asleep, doped up on morphling, and Asterid in the room, lingering in the corner like a ghost herself.

It’s only after Plutarch leaves that Asterid moves to the foot of the bed. Haymitch waits for the room to stop spinning to say, “I’m sorry, Asterid. About Primrose, and…” He draws a breath when she flinches and averts her gaze. “I’m sorry.”

Asterid presses her lips together. Minutes of listening to the beeping machines and dripping saline bags passed before she speaks. “Medicine can treat most anything, but it can’t fix how losing them will change you.” She shuts her eyes, and when she opens them again, she looks at Haymitch. Burdock’s death changed her differently but no less severely than yours changed Haymitch. And with the loss of her little one… Haymitch suspects her eyes will always be hollowed out. “We all knew what we saw wasn’t the whole story, anyway. And it couldn’t have been a coincidence your house caught on fire when it did.”

There is no mistaking her grace, like that of Burdock’s, for anything less than forgiveness.

Asterid stares at Katniss, and eventually Haymitch turns his focus back on her, too. She’s still fast asleep when Asterid whispers, “You’ll take care of her?”

“As best I can,” he promises. She doesn’t need to ask it of Haymitch for him to do all he can for Katniss.

Haymitch splits his coming days between visiting Peeta in the hospital and chasing Katniss around the presidential mansion, making sure they’re both fed and medicated. And when his shift with either kid ends, Haymitch is free. Free, and unsure of what to do with it besides what he always has: drinking his own weight, cycling through his worst memories, and searching for his love.

He’ll never make peace with you, he fears one especially bad night when he dreams of the terrors that must’ve passed in his assigned room. Missing you is all Haymitch seems to know, and it gets worse, not better, in these early days of a new Panem you’ll never get to see. None of his dead will, their resting places blown to bits. Maybe that’s why the nightmares have come back and the ghosts haven’t. They said their goodbyes back in Thirteen’s eggshell hospital room, and the new ones have skipped over their need for vengeance. But you…

Is this all he’s good for, he wonders while sitting in the mess he can’t remember making. He can’t even pinpoint what pushed him to take his fists to the room besides the instinct to destroy anything he touches and the explosive need to put his emotions somewhere.

It doesn’t work because it never has. Peel back the bandaid and the wound is still there. The longing, the shame, the self-loathing is sitting right on his chest. It just might be all he’s good for.

Haymitch’s pity party takes him away from his responsibilities, and Katniss comes to remind him he still has a purpose in this new, free world.

Things are better but frail between them, and when the dust settles, he’ll have to answer for it. Half aware of the strain, half trapped in the nightmare she woke him from, Haymitch lets a cruel joke slip and watches her face crumble in a way it so rarely does because of something he said. He stumbles up and down every corridor, but he doesn’t find Katniss until a couple hours have passed. By then, she’s sealed her voice to him again.

The apple doesn’t fall far at all; it just keeps hitting Haymitch over the fucking head.

But in the days that follow Coin’s death, with Katniss in solitary confinement, his concern for her and Peeta becomes its own living, breathing entity. Coexisting with his grief for you, instead of taking its place.

They don’t allow Haymitch to speak to Katniss, or even see her, during the weeks of her trial in which he is a witness in her defense. Newly appointed President Paylor finds exile the most fitting for the deranged yet harmless mockingjay. She didn’t seem all that convinced by the opposing argument. Haymitch figures she wasn’t keen on what Coin was selling either.

Asterid’s letter burns a hole in his right pocket, the envelope jingling with more than paper as he walks the halls of the Training Center. Haymitch already said his goodbyes to Peeta, who he knows will return to Twelve as soon as he’s cleared, and Effie, who he doubts he’ll ever see again. Keeping her alive was difficult, and Plutarch had to help him convince Coin she wasn’t a threat.

For all her ignorance, Effie never has been the worst of them. Haymitch hates that months of captivity are what finally opened her eyes to the Capitol’s evil and the pillar she maintained under it. She seemed to have some color back to her when he told her he and Katniss were leaving this morning.

“I don’t have to tell you to watch over her,” said Effie, her voice losing its chipperness, “but don’t forget to take care of yourself.”

He would, and he already has. But he still nodded and said, “Thank you, Effie.”

Standing outside Katniss’s door now, Haymitch takes a sip from his flask. More out of habit than necessity. The liquor’s effect has been slow as of late. He might as well be stone-cold sober as the guards let him inside to where Katniss is curled on her bed, quietly singing a tune he hasn’t heard since nights spent star-gazing.

And there's no past, and there's no future, only now

And we have chanced upon this fragile scene somehow.

Haymitch shoves the flask into his left pocket and approaches her bed. If he had any to give, or thought it’d serve her, he’d offer words of comfort. Instead, he tells her the information she needs. “Your trial’s over.” She can barely lift her head to acknowledge him. He squeezes her elbow softly. And even though they don’t have much of one anymore, he says, “Come on. We’re going home.”

While a team of medics and nurses file in to help bathe and feed her, Haymitch is escorted to the roof of the Training Center. There, Plutarch waits with a hovercraft at his disposal. He’s taken to this new world with no reserve or difficulty, like a leaf in the wind. Who knows where it’ll take him next? Good thing Haymitch won’t be around to find out. He’s officially been discharged of all his rebel duties. Plutarch assured him he and Beetee had a handle on things for now. But Beetee has his own bridges to mend, with himself most of all.

Never one to let things be, Plutarch talks the entire waiting period on the hovercraft. “For what it’s worth,” he chimes, taking the seat next to Haymitch, “your better half would’ve been proud of you.”

Haymitch has never cared for Plutarch’s opinions on you before, and he doesn’t now. He doesn’t need them either to know that whether you’d be proud of him or not, he did this for every person who isn’t here and those that still are. Finally, finally, after all his failures, he managed to get one thing right. And the success belongs to Katniss more than it does to him. You’re proud of her, of that he’s certain.

Plutarch buckles his seatbelt. “And I think she’ll make a great special feature on Never Forgotten.”

Haymitch glares at him blankly. “I’d workshop the title.”

Plutarch grins. An attendant carries Katniss in and fastens her into the seat across from them. Haymitch tunes out Plutarch’s musings on war and the fickle memory of humanity. He doesn’t say much until long after Plutarch is deposited in Three and Katniss directs her new questions to him.

He answers every one of them with the delivery of Asterid’s letter. Katniss holds the envelope in both hands, running her fingers over the handwriting, pinching the bump in one of the corners. She only sets it down when Haymitch forces her to eat something, and he sees her pick it back up again on his way out of the compartment.

When they touch down on the unblemished grass of Victor’s Village, he makes sure Katniss is safe and sound—safe, at the very least—inside her house. Haymitch contemplates staying, but the bottles in his bag are calling to him, and by the empty glower she sends his way, he reckons she needs the space as much as he does.

So he gives her plenty for the rest of winter. The frost begins to dissipate, the snow long since having melted. So much for landing on top.

Haymitch visits at night, when Sae is washing the dishes and Katniss is fast asleep in her room. Sae tells him how she’s doing, but there’s never any change to her updates. Katniss wakes and eats and wastes away in the same rocking chair until it’s time to sleep.

“You should talk to the girl,” Sae tells Haymitch about three weeks into his new, recycled routine.

He should, and he will, but he doesn’t want to right now, too scared to see her for himself. Scared to find your reflection in her broken spirit. If Haymitch talks to Katniss, it’ll force him back into that eggshell room with no choice but to confront his own damage and make something worthwhile of his new circumstances.

They continue on their separate and passive paths, more than happy to do so, until Peeta shows up out of the corner of his eye, a moving blur through his kitchen window. Convinced he’s making up the sight, Haymitch scrambles to his feet and towards the front door.

Daylight blinds Haymitch for a moment, and he rubs his eyes to clear the blur in them. Peeta’s still there when he gets his vision back. He breathes in. His boy is right here, blinking right back at him. “When did you get here?”

“This morning,” answers Peeta, out of breath. What he could’ve been doing to make him that fatigued—

Haymitch notices the wheelbarrow in his hands, full of primrose bushes. His throat clogs up. “Well,” he sniffs, “good to see you, kid.”

Peeta offers a smile, as gentle as Haymitch remembers it to be even if it doesn’t shine as bright as it used to, and turns down the pathway to Katniss’s house. Haymitch spends the rest of the day holed up inside his own as usual, but come sunset, he takes a walk to check on the kids.

Slowly, with the return of spring, Haymitch sees a light come back to Katniss. As he begins to join her and Peeta for the occasional breakfast or dinner, he feels it infecting him too. He starts to look both of them in the eye without flinching or searching for ghosts. Since the liquor’s mostly lost its powers of anesthesia and Twelve’s ration only comes once a month by train, there’s no point in hoarding it. No point in messing up his house again either.

He slips up as always. Sometimes it’s because the memories of your death and everyone else’s won’t stop tormenting him. Others because it’s the only thing he can count on. Once because he decides to take a walk through the groundwork of a new District Twelve and stumbles upon the ruins of where the old Donner’s sweetshop stood.

After that, Haymitch spends more time with Katniss and Peeta, learns to nurse his drinks, leaves his house while it’s light out.

He catches glimpses of the book they’re working on in passing, pictures or sketches of people he knew. He never lingers, and he never acknowledges the book. Sometimes Haymitch thinks they leave it out when they know he’s coming on purpose, to remind him that forgetting is the real betrayal. Doesn’t matter how true it is, or how different their intentions are from Plutarch’s—Haymitch has no interest in contributing to their project.

But then he sees them working on Burdock’s page, the sketch of his smile so accurate, so reminiscent of the moment Burdock declared them friends, Haymitch can’t help himself. “We used to go skinny dipping, you know.”

Nothing comes quite as amusing as the reactive disgust on Katniss’s face.

From there, everything spills out. Burdock taking Haymitch through the woods, days spent throwing knives and picking apples, the love he showed Haymitch even when he least deserved it. Talking about Burdock leads Haymitch to Lenore Dove, how she loved her tune box and geese, and about their Covey roots.

The more Haymitch reveals, the less it costs to say their names out loud. He describes Sid and his starry eyes, and his ma with her initials written in the sky, for Peeta to draw. They aren’t exact replicas, but they’re pretty damn close. They’re memorialized side by side, as they were in life.

Each day that goes by is dedicated to one of his losses, those he loved and others he never had the chance to. He shares the names of every one of his kids over the first twenty-three years before Katniss and Peeta. Then the names of his allies, and bits of the reality of his Games. To tell it how it happened reminds Haymitch that none of it was in vein. However long it took, the Hunger Games are dead and buried, and the Capitol with it.

During Maysilee’s entry, he talks about her necklaces and how she loathed that mockingjay pin, but oh how she would’ve loved the poster it turned into. Her page comes between Merrilee’s and Madge’s.

Somewhere down the line, the memories he’s been carrying on his own become something beyond a burden. It’s strange to think of his loved ones and not have their deaths be the first image that comes to mind. Strange but welcome. And by putting all their good somewhere safe and permanent, Haymitch feels them come alive again.

The only person he can’t bring himself to share is you. Not fully and not yet, but you come up in snippets. He can’t avoid you when he tells them about Burdock bringing him the bracelet. Or when he mentions your role in tending to the geese, or you and Maysilee singing about ladybugs.

They never ask for more details, and Haymitch is surprised Katniss doesn’t push on the matter. In the absence of your page, they find other things to contribute: a dried primrose here, a photo of Finnick and Annie’s son there.

By the time a second winter has passed, the book is filled with hopes of the future as much as recollections of the past. More people return after they break ground on a factory for medicine, including Louella’s family, and the meadow begins to bloom again.

It’s there, in the fresh grass concealing the graveyard beneath it, that Haymitch runs into Clerk Carmine one afternoon.

The geese Katniss gifted him have barely hatched, and they enjoy the meadow more than his backyard most times. They honk when Clerk Carmine nears, and if Haymitch weren’t caught up in wishing he had a bottle on hand, he might laugh at the irony.

Last he’d seen of Clerk Carmine was during Finnick and Annie’s wedding. Lively and downright spirited in a way Haymitch never thought possible. How he managed to keep his fiddle on him was a mystery Haymitch didn’t care to solve. He stuck to the edges of the room, out of his sight, and cared more about how he was going to pull Katniss away from dancing to tell her about Peeta’s progress at the time.

There are no corners or walls to stick to now. Clerk Carmine stops right in front of Haymitch, wordlessly motioning to the treeline of the woods, now fence-free. Grown as Haymitch now is, Clerk Carmine elicits the same brutal instincts he developed at sixteen. A dozen cruel, petty words come to mind, partially from a need to send Clerk Carmine away and mostly from the desire to inflame his hatred of Haymitch. He doesn’t say any of them. They’re pointless now, and Haymitch’s feet have already decided to walk after him.

Though it’s been decades since he walked this exact path, his bones know where he’s heading. For years, Haymitch tried to retrace his steps, mimic the trail, and find where it ended. He never did, forgetting turns and markings with each failed attempt. Always retreating with his own vicious reminders of your damnation. Haymitch doesn’t hear them now, neither from your voice nor his. Only birdsong and wind chimes by the time they reach the clearing of graves.

Haymitch counts the seven headstones, spread across two rows and half filled with the names of those etched upon his heart, and sinks to his knees before yours. They let out a crackling sound in protest, but the dirt softens the stiffness of his joints. There’s no soothing balm for the ache spreading inside his body, credited to loss, not age or liver failure.

Tears prick behind his eyes, and his lungs constrict with the lack of air, but Haymitch manages to read the words carved on the limestone.

Where the Youth pined away with desire,

And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:

Arise from their graves and aspire,

Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

Sensing Clerk Carmine take a step beside him, Haymitch croaks, “Why’d you bring me here?” He’s done nothing to Clerk Carmine to earn his sympathy, and he’s never cared for it anyway. So why would he extend this kindness now? Out of the goodness of a heart completely closed off to Haymitch? That’s unlikely.

“I have a couple of years left in me, but it’s any day now.” Clerk Carmine lets a beat pass. “I’m ready to be with my people again. Wouldn’t be right to leave without settling things.”

“What for?” Haymitch scoffs, finally turning to him. Clerk Carmine keeps his gaze on the graves before them. Flitting from the very first behind yours, which tells of a girl named Lucy Gray, all the way to Burdock’s honorary slab. “You were right not to trust me.”

“Maybe at the time,” Clerk Carmine says, head dropping slightly, “but you were just a boy then. You…weren’t to blame.” He lifts his head, allowing Haymitch to see the guilt written in the weary set of his eyes. “I knew my niece, and I knew her heart. She chose to give it to you for good reason.”

For good reason. Gravitating towards the words meant to immortalize your spirit, Haymitch lets the shame wash over him in waves, and when it calms inside him, he’s no more ready to listen to Clerk Carmine than he was to Burdock in his withdrawal-induced hallucinations.

“I never thought I’d live to be free again,” says Clerk Carmine abruptly and begrudgingly at the same time. “Suppose I have you to thank for that.”

“Burdock’s girl did all the work,” deflects Haymitch.

He doesn’t turn to see if Clerk Carmine’s leaving, but he picks up on the shuffling of his steps and the pensive hum. “She wasn’t alone,” he sighs so lowly, Haymitch can hardly hear him. His footsteps dwindle, offering a final kindness of privacy.

The sun dips below the trees and looms directly above your headstone, brightening the hint of blue. Haymitch’s knotted lungs constrict until his breath comes out in a choked laugh. “Hear that, sunshine? I finally won over Clerk Carmine.”

He stares at the flowers growing from your grave and thinks about all the nights he’s spent wanting to be with you, buried in the same earth. Resenting the life you gave him. “I wish it hadn’t taken so long, me getting here.” No talking birds deliver your voice to him, or give him the answer he wants to hear from you. Those surrounding the clearing flit from branch to branch, free as can be. “And now that I have, I know I can’t stay. I got kids to take care of—you’d love ’em, headaches that they are.”

His eyes begin to blur. There’s dozens of things he wants to, and should, say to you now that you’re as close to face-to-face as you can get. About Katniss and Peeta, about Snow’s demise, about Twelve’s reconstruction. Apologies, pleas, offerings. Most of them he’s said already, running that tune ragged.

Haymitch glances at Lenore Dove’s grave, then at the evergreen leaves sprouting from Burdock’s. The plot of primroses are fresher, newly sowed and barely coming into themselves, unlike those Peeta planted about a year ago. They’re everywhere now, carrying the memory of the little one who took on their name as her own. She’s who Haymitch thinks of now when he looks at them. Not the shattered glass and your poisoned blood. Not the death of the little girl he hardly knew except for her sweet soul. But the one whose spirit lives on, as her pa would have Haymitch believe, seeing the world through her brilliant sister’s eyes.

And why shouldn’t he believe it? Haymitch can almost hear Burdock asking him. He can almost feel you wondering the same. You were always tangled by your roots, as much of Haymitch as he was of you.

“I’m gonna make good on this new life for us,” he swears, running his pinkie over the words on your headstone.

Haymitch thinks you believe him, because when he dreams late at night, he finds you in your meadow, dandelions and wildflowers twinkling under the sun. Your face is still obscured from where he stands, but as you recite your dear poem beginning to end, whatever’s left of his rotten heart unfurls.

It’s still partially dark out when he wakes the kids. Neither of them are pleased, and Peeta’s torture in the Capitol has chipped away at his tolerance some. They both snap at Haymitch, only retracting their hostility when he clues them in to his request and motions to the counter where their book has made a home.

He sets down the bracelet and a bottle. Katniss and Peeta exchange wary looks, their silence a question for him to answer. Haymitch has been doing his best to make his supply last as of late, and he never drinks when they work on the book.

“I just need the option,” is what he tells them before sitting at the kitchen table. He needs the drink more like it, but they deserve his memories at their sharpest. So do you.

They follow slowly. Katniss opens the book in front of her, pencil in hand. Peeta lays out his sketching tools.

Tapping the cap of the bottle, Haymitch lifts his gaze to Katniss. “What do you want to know first?”

“I don’t…” Her eyes migrate from him to the bracelet to the bottle. When they meet his again, recognition cracks her expression. “She liked maple leaves, right?”

Haymitch feels a smile tugging at him, and he leans back from the bottle.

With no shortage of stories, he makes sure they know who you are. Your affinity for tree climbing and rock collecting and maple creams from the sweetshop. The day you showed your hate for him, and the morning you showed up with three hot pepper cherry taffy pieces for his mamaw’s funeral. Even the time his pa made you laugh.

Happy memories weave themselves in with the bad. That scrawny, hideous cat of yours. All the riddles and nonsense you’d sprout about your beliefs, which he never fully understood then. How deeply you loved your people. How restless you were, and self-righteous, and stubborn. What a gift it was to be yours. Even in the wreckage left behind by your absence, Haymitch wouldn’t give that up.

He tells them that. He shares every bit of you, because it’s all worth remembering.

And Haymitch gets through it without a lick of alcohol, but after he finishes detailing your last poster together in the arena, your last words, he grabs the bottle and mutters his goodbyes. He’s not two steps down the porch when he senses Katniss hot on his heel.

“Why are you trailing after me?” he snaps, spinning around and expecting her to snark back. If she thinks he’ll accept her pity—

Katniss wraps her arms around him tightly. The urge to snipe and scold her is stopped short. Hesitantly, Haymitch returns her embrace.

“Thanks,” Katniss murmurs earnestly.

Haymitch clamps his eyes shut, feeling the sting behind them. He waits until it passes and lets go of Katniss with a sigh. “See you at dinner, sweetheart.”

Like the others, it becomes easier to talk about you, even with your entry in their book completed. Little things and details crop up. Moments Haymitch can’t help but want to reminisce on.

That year’s spring passes by like a breeze, and come summer, on what would’ve been the 77th Hunger Games but is now Haymitch’s birthday, he wakes at peace.

Though they agreed not to fill the day with fanfare or gifts of any kind, the kids never do listen fully. Peeta bakes a wildberry pie for breakfast, tasting like the jam his ma would make. By the third bite, his hands stop shaking.

Halfway through his slice and his drink, Haymitch watches Katniss slide over a neatly folded napkin. He glares at her but unfolds it gently. Nestled in the center lies your bluebird, vibrant and polished. He hasn’t thought of it since he saw it around Primrose’s neck in Thirteen, which feels negligent on his part. It’s not attached to any cord now, and his mind lands on the envelope Asterid trusted him to pass along.

“She gave it to you,” says Katniss, anticipating the questions about to fall out of his mouth. “You’ll have more use for it than I do.”

The memory of you in the arena, of Ampert’s trembling hands passing over this very charm, comes and goes in the blink of an eye. Whatever lump beginning to form in his throat is shoved back down by the wandering cat under the table who bumps into his ankle, looking for scraps and bringing him back to reality. Haymitch swallows, gives her a short nod of thanks, and finishes his pie.

Less than a week passes when he decides to repay Katniss. High time a proper introduction was made anyway.

Haymitch hasn’t returned since the day Clerk Carmine brought him, but it doesn’t take him long to recall the way. There, carrying enough willow tree branches for each grave, he bypasses the honor to Katniss.

She doesn’t divide them immediately, stopping right in front of Burdock’s empty grave first, her shoulders rising and falling with the telltale sign of an impending sob. Haymitch reaches out, ready to catch her, but Katniss steadies herself on her own and lays her pa’s willow branch.

Your grave is saved for last. Katniss crouches down and reads the lines in a whisper, lower than she did with the others. She presses her three middle fingers to her lips, and Haymitch waits for her to lift them. Instead, she places her fingers atop your headstone.

He looks away while Katniss says goodbye to Burdock again. She returns to his side seconds later. “I’ll meet you back home.”

Understanding each other to a degree above frightening sometimes, Haymitch appreciates the privacy as he’s sure Katniss appreciates her time alone.

Once he’s sure Katniss has left, he kneels before you and digs for the bluebird in his jacket. The most precious thing you owned, weighed and measured in the palm of his hands. You’ve been without it for so long, and in returning it to where it belongs, in showing you he finally understands your wish for him, maybe you’ll recognize Haymitch’s own wishes for you.

He begins to scoop out a small plot of dirt right beside your headstone. He stops, fingers twitching, when an old warmth runs up his arms. One he hasn’t felt in ages but has never fully shed. It’s been lying in wait, nestled beneath his ribcage, alongside the distinct melody of your voice.

“You best not be giving that back, peach.”

Haymitch takes deep, slow breaths. His heart thumps at the base of his throat, but he doesn’t taste bile or tears. By sheer force alone, he manages to say, “Wouldn’t want you going without the full set, sunshine.” He keeps watch of your headstone as pieces of it glint under the afternoon light. “Besides,” he continues tightly, “I got your gift.”

“You liked it then?”

The teasing edge to your question undoes the tension inside him. Haymitch glances down at the charm and picks apart the hazy image of sitting under that oak tree in the schoolyard. He snickers a little. “You were never subtle at all, were you?”

“You weren’t exactly a needle in a haystack.” You scoff, but he can hear the smugness in your tone and imagines the grin plastered on your face. Haymitch wants to see it. He wants to see you in all your ghostly brilliance and know that you are free. That you’ve found peace in your world where birds talk and lost souls are found.

Without wasting a second to fear or cower, Haymitch turns his head.

The passage of years in your eyes strikes him. Unlike your youthful ghost, you hold his gaze without anger or shared resentment. Without pressing Haymitch for more, without exacting any vengeance. But your gaze is as raw and all-consuming as before. Forever the brightest sight he’s beheld. He thinks of the time you’ve lost and the future you’ve lived out together, even worlds apart. A future Haymitch has taken for granted—one he might not have for much longer, if the recent pain in his abdomen has anything to say about it, and only does in the first place because of you.

All that comes out of his mouth is a murmured “Why?”

You smile, even as your eyes glisten. Haymitch feels his own welling up. He knows your answer, has known it all along, hidden as you’ve both kept it. Even so, his aching chest calms as you say, “I love you, Haymitch.” You lift a shoulder, shrugging off any other reason as secondary, as unimportant as the simple truth of your unabashed heart reserved for him. No walls could keep him out now, and they never really could, he realizes. “I was never going to choose not to save you.”

Salt settles on his tongue. Haymitch takes a shuddered breath, the warmth bubbling inside him to a near boiling point, leaving him utterly helpless to blurt out in equal measure, “I love you.”

The wind passes between you, carrying a weight off his shoulders. Haymitch would’ve died for you too, had the roles been reversed. He would’ve taken that poison in a heartbeat, and he can’t blame you for beating him to the punch. He can’t keep hating himself for what he failed to achieve at sixteen. The only ones to blame have paid for the lives they’ve cost with their own. They’re gone, and Panem is free, and for the first time since, Haymitch feels he could try to be too.

You tilt your head, beaming, and motion to the spot between his brows. “You’ve been worrying a lot.”

“It’s those damn kids,” he sighs, heavy yet lighter than he’s ever felt in his adult life.

“Let them fret over you every now and then,” you say, gentle as the tears streaking your face.

Closing his eyes, indulging one last time in the phantom sensation of your forehead pressed against his, Haymitch wipes his face and nods. They already do, downright irritating in how they stick to him. But he’s their family, same as they are his, and they mean well. And it isn’t hard to catch onto what you really mean.

Your gift to Haymitch is the time he has left to live with and love them. He’ll visit, and he’ll see you again, and on the days until then, you’ll be with him. You always have been. If a piece of him was taken with you to your grave, then a piece of you is still this side of earth. Steady and true, like the rising sun. It’ll be there tomorrow, in this world and the next.

The nightmares will still come, too, because there is no cure for them. Haymitch will go on fearing and grieving and drinking because the scar isn’t one that goes away, only fades. And habits are hard to discard when they’ve been drummed into your bones. As impossible as forgetting, but Haymitch has no need to anymore. He accepts his losses and his wounds because he believes that death is not the end. His lost loves are everywhere, in everything he does and sees before he meets them in the hereafter.

So, when Haymitch looks up again to find no more than the rustling branches and dimming light of day, he doesn’t keel over. He patches up the unfinished hole in the ground, and carrying your love, he follows the sun home.

Epilogue

Taglist: @lovemiss-vale @aureolinb @mqrieshrt @bueburgers @dem1dearest @nikki-is-a-nerd @lovelylittlelesbianlore @jjloveshotch @inneedofcaffine @poetsandroses @kindsleybooks @ivyhaec @x-gabrielle-x @ghostlythinggoingaround @happiness2112 @sundawn1990 @starryjeongyeon @kuurbyfun @lenteheure @petrasbones @wertyuizxcvbnm @shiftingf1 @sarcasm-n-insomnia @defnotbrooklyn @harrypedro465 @rinatzsstuff @whimsybeth @youraggedybitch @poppysrin @watergirl85 @prettyandromeda @gaz0xx @marsupialnoises @madisonosidam @redshinyshoes @comfortcharacterwrites

A/N: that’s a wrap? 😭 part of this chapter taking so long to come out was my dissatisfaction with it, which i still feel some of. i realize i’ll always be a little dissatisfied by it because i simply don’t want it to be over. genuinely, thank you so very much for all the kindness and support you’ve sent me over this series. it means the world to know y’all care about it as dearly as i do.

there’s still an epilogue to come! and much more content about sunshine and haymitch! but we’ve officially said goodbye to itsdr and here are some parting tweets to cope with my sorrow

#excuse me while i cry over this series being basically over #never thought this day would come lowkey #i’ll finally be catching up on asks though!!#if the sun don't rise #haymitch abernathy x reader #haymitch x reader #haymitch abernathy fanfic #the hunger games fanfic #bipoc reader

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the ashes in my cigarette box