Worth Keeping | Haymitch Abernathy x Everdeen!Reader
Chapter 42 | I Won’t Love You Neither
Act 3: You and Haymitch have to mentor your niece as she goes through her games hating the both of you and goes through a rebellion needing the two of you.
The door shut with a resounding slam. It seemed so dramatic for it opened again seconds later revealing Gale Hawthorne. His arms wrapped around Katniss in a rare but familiar embrace.
“I’m fine,” she told him.
“I know,” he said as he let go.
“I am,” she insisted.
He looked at her for a moment, truly taking in the last time he may ever see his best friend again.
“Listen to me. You're stronger than they are.” She shook her head and turned it away from him. “You are. Get to a bow.”
“They may not have—“
“They will,” because if they didn’t, the whole world fell apart and so would the promise she just made to Prim, “if you show them how good you are. They just want a good show. That's all they want. That’s why they choose people like you and Prim. If they don't have a bow, then you make one, ok? You know how to hunt.”
“Animals,” the word came out strangled.
“It's no different Katniss,” because it couldn’t be.
The weight of it settled in now that Prim was gone and so was her mother. Away from her sight but not out of her mind. Still, reality was harsh and cruel.
“There's twenty-four of us Gale. Only one comes out,” she said, trying to state facts but emotion still bled through.
He grabbed her shoulders. “Yeah, and it’s going to be you.”
A Peacekeeper came into the room. Time was up. The clock had ticked its final second. Panic set back in as Gale’s steady presence was forced away from Katniss.
“Take care of them, Gale! Whatever you do, don't let them starve!” she called out, making sure that the words were heard before the door closed and she was left with silence.
She wanted to cry, scream, shout, throw something. She settled for a stony countenance as she nearly always wore.
She was ushered into a car with Effie Trinket and Peeta Mellark. The Capitol woman in her outrageous dress began to prattle on about all the different sights they would see.
Katniss studied Peeta and his tear stained face with occasional new ones leaking out, wondering if he was already planning something. She needed to win, for Prim. She was already trying to think.
He could be going towards the same route as Johanna Mason. A girl who won several years back, getting by with her meek appearance and stature but then turning around to become a skilled killer.
Katniss wondered how you had won. They didn’t play the older games and even if they did, she wouldn’t have any want to watch it.
Not in any vehicle yet, you watched from the sidelines as Haymitch was adamant about getting footage of Primrose and Asterid for the editorial shots. You’d never seen him so adamant before.
You couldn’t move. Your feet were glued to the ground in one place as you stared at Asterid and her carbon copy daughter.
You’d never had a conversation with Primrose before. You had intended to keep it that way. She looked just like her mother. The same blonde hair and blue eyes with the same lithe body type. It was like you were looking at a twelve year old Asterid instead of another person.
The girl your brother— your dead brother— had a crush on for nearly his whole life.
The first words you’d spoken to Asterid since Burdock’s passing were the same ones you’d said to her that day only now you had no delivery except the promise you could stand by one of her daughters on her march toward death, “I’m sorry.”
Asterid’s eyes met yours. They were as dead as Burdock with no grave, just ash.
Arms wrapped around you, at your waist. A head settled just below your sternum. You hesitated before you hugged back.
“You’ll bring her back to us, right?” Primrose asked.
“I’ll try,” you told her.
She nodded against you. You felt wet soak into the fabric of your mother’s shirt you wore.
“It’s time,” Haymitch said, sounding so oddly sober for how much you knew he had drank just hours before.
You barely heard her voice as Primrose left you with a final squeeze which you returned to her. “I don’t think it was your fault.”
Your heart broke.
Because you knew inside that it was. Unsure as to how or why but it had to be. It must be your fault.
You left for the train.
“Have you ever met him?” Peeta asked. “Haymitch?—“ because of course he would assume she had met you— “You know, Katniss, he is one of our mentors. He did win this once and so did—“
“I haven’t talked to them,” she said to cut him off from saying your name, “either of them.”
You pressed your head against the wall, leaned against it until you could feel the pressure turn into pain.
“Don’t overthink every little thing,” Haymitch said, sliding his hands up your arms. “You haven’t done anything to warrant this. Maybe it was just luck of the draw.”
“Her name was in there once,” you reminded him.
“You know how they rig things,” he continued, trying to convince you and himself, “sometimes they just want a bunch of young ones.”
He wrapped his arms around your torso and leaned so he could rest his chin atop your hair.
On the other side of the door you could hear the sounds of the merchant boy trying and failing to make small talk with Katniss.
“Did he say anything the last time he called you for a visit?” Haymitch asked.
Your head shook just barely from side to side. “No,” your voice was weak.
“Then maybe it was just really shitty luck,” he said. “He promised to tell you and he didn’t. He is many things but he’s a horrible liar and a man who enjoys to torment others too much to not gloat when he’s planned to do it.”
Haymitch leaned all his weight against you before he retracted it. “I’ll deal with them for now,” he said before he pushed open the door.
It was hard to tell as the years went by if the pain from his scar was real or just a phantom caused by flare ups in his trauma. Either way, his hand wandered to his stomach with your eyes not on him and a grimace passed over his features.
“Congratulations!” he said as he walked into the room properly and took a look at the two tributes before him.
His eyes barely scanned Katniss. She was too painful to look at. Instead he took in the more brawling figure of the stout merchant boy who looked like Otho Mellark.
His movements swayed a bit now that he was no longer at your side and now that you no longer needed him as an anchor physically.
He walked not straight— because he couldn’t do that— but in a path to the bar cart. He popped open a bottle with his teeth and poured it.
He opened the ice container and closed his eyes, well aware of both pairs that were on him. To add to an already awful day.
The lid dangled from his fingertips. “Where’s the ice?”
“I don’t—“ the boy shook his head— “I don’t know.”
Haymitch nodded and exhaled through his nose carefully. The container lid was returned with a loud bang. He swiped the whole bottle.
“May I?”
He didn’t wait for an answer before he sat.
He knew, logically, he was being an ass. He knew, logically, you would be yelling at him to correct his behavior if you were in a right state of mind beside him. He knew, logically, he should be thinking in a more strategic manner to get your niece out of this mess.
Instead, he was right back where he was almost twenty years ago when your name was called all over again.
Stuck in the mindset of “don’t get attached again, it’ll only end badly” even though he already knew he was. Because once Haymitch Abernathy got attached, he couldn’t get himself unstuck.
He was worse than glue or the glitter Effie got everywhere with her makeup and outfits.
He was ash and soot.
He settled in crevices and places he shouldn’t reach. He was hard to get out and sometimes even harder to spot, especially in the dark. Even worse than that, he was flammable. He made things spark and then they went up in flames which turned to smoke.
“Okay, so, uh, when do we start?” Otho’s copy asked, scooting to the edge of his seat.
“Whoa, whoa, so eager.”
He flicked some of his hair out of his face, wavy and graying now. It used to be curly. You said it was how much he drank. He had no idea if that was right.
“Most of you aren’t in such a hurry.”
“Yeah, I wanna know what the plan is. You’re our mentor. You’re supposed to—“
“Mentor?”
He wanted to know, wanted to know what this kid had in his head that mentors were supposed to do.
“Yeah, you’re our mentor,” he continued, the beginnings of annoyance starting to fester in his voice. “You're supposed to tell us how to get sponsors and give us advice.”
“Oh, um,” he pretended to think but the ghost of Wyatt haunted him so often the words came easy. “Embrace the probability of your imminent death and know in your heart, that there's nothing I can do to save you.”
The first words Burdock’s daughter ever said to him were ones of disdain, annoyance, and irritation, “So why are you here?”
He swirled his drink which was less satisfying without any clinking of ice, “The refreshments.”
“Okay, I think that’s enough of that,” the Mellark boy said as he went to grab Haymitch’s drink.
Before he could even fully stand, Haymitch had him pinned to his chair with his foot. His drink sloshed around in the cup and a drop escaped the rim.
The only person who could get him to stop drinking was you.
“You made me spill my drink—“ he gesture to his lap— “brand new pants.”
He pushed himself up.
He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t argue with a kids expectations while looking at a carbon copy of his best friend who he needed to save from these games.
He was trying to think. He just couldn’t.
Not while looking at her and seeing him and you and his own mistakes. Not while having some privileged seam kid who acted like him but looked like her and came from the same place as her gave him remarks.
“I think, I’ll go finish this in my room.”
He left the cart.
“He’s gonna come around,” Peeta said after he was gone.
He began to stand.
“What? It’s no use,” Katniss told him.
He didn’t listen to her and still trailed after the man no matter how pointless.
Haymitch didn’t listen to or clean up for anyone except maybe you. She’d heard rumors that you’d known one another since before your respective games and that was why but they were only rumors. They held no weight.
She was well aware how people talked in the Seam.
Rumors about you seemed to follow her throughout her entire life. Especially after her father died.
People would point you out to her when you came to retrieve Haymitch— for you were came to town for little else— like she didn’t notice you immediately and whisper something.
“They were friends before their games, you know.”
“They used to play music with their cousin right there.”
“Your pa and them once got into a biiig fight and nearly cut someone’s head off. That’s why there’s an axe mark on that tree.”
Those words swirled around Katniss her entire life.
For the first time, she was face to face with you.
Your eyes flitted to her for a mere second before they cast downward. Your lips moved in unspoken words. Your fists clenched and unclenched.
“Hello, Katniss,” you said, voice quiet.
She said nothing in return.
You didn’t sit. You didn’t move close. You did nothing. You just stood there. Not looking at her, not moving.
Your eyes closed. “I apologize on behalf of Haymitch. I don’t know what he’s done but I’m sure it requires an apology. . . and I’m sorry as well.”
Her stomach turned. Her eyes stung. Her nostrils flared. Her lips began to move on their own.
She didn’t know why.
Abruptly she stood, spun around, and walked out of the cart. You were alone and continued to be so until late into the night.
“The boy wouldn’t leave me alone,” Haymitch said as he tugged off his shirt.
You were already in bed, uncaring of the Capitol eyes this year you’d decided. Let their rumors spread. They were right.
“I couldn’t even look at her,” you told him.
He pulled back the blankets and slipped beside you. You turned to your side. The two of you were face to face now. Your breathes were intertwined and danced across one another’s cheeks.
“How did you do it?” you asked him.
His head shook just barely. “You didn’t give me a choice, darling. I had to look at you.”
His hand, large and warm, engulfed the side of your face. His thumb stroked your cheek. His grey eyes looked deeply, sincerely into yours.
He leaned forward to tentatively place a kiss to your lips. They were chapped and tasted of alcohol but familiar. His hand curled around your jaw. Then found its way to the back of your neck to pull you in closer.
The kiss wasn’t lustful or burning with desire. No, instead it was gentle, calm, grounding even.
“I’ll hold you through this nightmare,” he promised you.
Peeta woke early in the morning but you were already awake. He paused catching a glimpse of what life for the girl he loved may look like in a future he may never see.
He— like most of District Twelve— knew of you but didn’t know you. He knew some things people said in passing but those things could very easily be lies as they could be the truth.
What he knew most was how sad you looked and how much you resembled Katniss in ways her own mother did not.
He very hesitantly sat down at the table, trying not to stare even if his eyes flickered to you.
Haymitch walked into the cart, buttoning the last button of his shirt with a yawn. He winced as the full force of the sun hit his eyes with the blinds and curtains both drawn in this part of the train. He rubbed them as he sat beside you.
Peeta watched with slightly furrowed brows as the plate he’d watched you so carefully make was dragged away from you and in front of Haymitch. You seemed unbothered by it as you simply grabbed another plate and began to fill it instead.
Slowly, Peeta began to fill his own as he began to pry for questions, advice. Things that mentors should give.
After his very long discussion with Haymitch, the man was giving him answers, short quipped as they were. It seemed that he didn’t even need to have one with you in spite of your absence the day prior for you to join the conversation.
“What’s a good way to get killed?” Katniss asked as she entered the room as quiet as a mouse.
“Oh, joy. Why don't you join us?” Haymitch said, gesturing with his head to a seat. He turned his attention elsewhere, however, as he picked up the tea kettle and began to top off your drink. “We were just giving some life saving advice.”
“Like what?”
“I was just asking how to find shelter,” Peeta told her.
He took note of how you seemed to instantly clam up when she announced her presence. Where you had been giving advice to him freely. Now you looked down at your cup that Haymitch filled in your hands.
“Which would come in handy if you were still alive,” Haymitch added cynically as he picked up a spoon and twirled it.
“How do you find shelter?” Katniss asked.
He pointed with the spoon. “Pass the sugar.”
She added hardness into her voice, “How do you find shelter?”
He closed his eyes as he reached into his breast pocket. “Give me a chance to wake up.” A flask was produced and unscrewed. “This mentoring stuff is very taxing stuff.”
He began to pour liquor into his cup but evidently not as much as he’d have liked. You grabbed the flask from him before he was finished and plucked the cap from his fingers. There was something silent spoken between the two of you.
He pointed with the spoon still between his fingers, “Can you pass the sugar?”
A knife was logged into the table between the spoon and webbing of Haymitch’s thumb and pointer.
“That is Mahogany!” Effie scolded, speaking for the first time during the morning.
“Look at you. You just killed—“ Haymitch dropped the spoon and unlodged the knife— “a placemat.”
He gave her a tense smile as he turned the knife so the blade faced him and tossed it back to her. He picked the spoon back up and reached for the sugar.
“You really wanna know how to stay alive? You get people to like you. Oh!” he cocked his head to the side with a look he knew made people want to smack him. “Not what you were expecting?”
He got at least one spoonful of sugar and scooped it into your drink before he began to mix it.
“Well, when you're in the middle of The Games, and you're starving or freezing, some water, a knife, or even some matches can mean the difference between life and death.”
He felt your hand come under the table to squeeze his thigh. He was being harsh. He knew that but he was being truthful.
“And those things only come from sponsors. And to get sponsors, you have to make people like you.”
He stopped mixing your tea. He could’ve stopped a long time ago but looking at her was like looking at you and Burdock and all of his mistakes. He tapped the spoon twice against your cup.
“And right now, you're not off to a real good start but if you want advice on that, you’ve probably already figured out you shouldn’t come to me.” He placed the cup in front of you and his voice softened. “Here you go, darling.”
This time when your eyes met Katniss’s, you didn’t look away.
“There it is,” Peeta said, his voice giving way to an awe you had never felt looking at the Capitol. “It’s huge! It’s incredible!”
He beckoned Katniss over as he waved at the citizens.
“You better keep that knife,” Haymitch told her. “He knows what he’s doing.”
“Remember to keep a tight grip,” you told her as Haymitch had once told you while she was dragged away to be appointed her carriage.