Archive of Our Own

Effie was staring daggers at me. The effect was slightly lessened by the fact that apparently eyebrows were out this year so hers were missing, making her look at little like a radioactive insect, but still, a pissed off radioactive insect and there was something about her. When she gave that look even the peacekeepers steered clear of her warpath. I was fond of it when she was leveling it at peacekeepers. Not so much when she was leveling it at me.

Course, she had a reason to be peeved. I usually kept track of my days on a little calendar hanging on the kitchen wall. I marked each morning off with chalk, but apparently at some point, I'd missed a few. I was not ready for her to show up on the morning of the fourth. I was convinced it was the day before the Reaping and had been drinking since I woke up before dawn. I was so far gone drunk by the time Effie arrived at my house that I couldn't stand right. I looked a mess at the ceremony, falling over, and threw up off the edge of the stage on live television. 

Well, at least that's what Effie said happened. I was completely blacked out for the whole thing. Which would be the best possible way to spend my birthday, were it not for the consequences; Effie was positively livid with me. She hadn't spoken to me since chewing me out for letting our children down when she roused me for breakfast on the train, but she didn't need to. The stare I was getting said plenty. I hadn't seen such disappointment in anyone since the time I promised Ma I'd walk Sid home on his first day of kindergarten and I totally forgot to pick him up. That plus the hangover splitting my head in two made me want to disappear into my chair. At least she wasn't asking me to wear the ridiculous suits on the train anymore. I was allowed to exist in waistcoat and shirtsleeves, though I suspected that had more to do with the fact that my jacket was a little too big again and it was making her angrier than any lenience towards me. 

This year's pair sat across from me at breakfast, alternating between eating eggs like they'd never had enough food in their lives, which they hadn't, and looking at me with some combination of skepticism and distaste, which was definitely due to my stellar performance at the Reaping. The girl, Hetty, was a slip of a thing. Tall for her age, at fourteen, but slightly underfed. She was very pretty in a waifish way, and I could tell by the fact that her hair had been put up in a bright pink ribbon that was definitely not from Twelve that Effie had already taken something of a shine to her. 

I didn't like her odds. I could hear Wyatt Callow in my head reminding me that no fourteen year old had ever won. 

The boy, Maston, was another story. He'd been in my year at school. I was never close to him, but since they graduated this spring, he and Burdie had started working together at the mines. He had proposed to his girl in the class below us the day after graduation. Problem is, he'd been the only boy younger than me in our year. 

His nineteenth birthday was July 11th. He'd be turning nineteen his first day in the arena. It was a gratifying feeling to know there was one asshole left in Twelve with luck almost as terrible as mine. Course, there probably wouldn't be by July 12th. Still....he had a chance. He'd probably be the oldest one in the arena, and he'd been eating miners rations, so he was big and strong. If I could wrangle some sponsors.....

I could tell by the way Effie was feeding him that we were having the same thought. There was a chance, a slim chance, but still a chance, that I would not be going home alone that year. She was watching me carefully across the table as I gave them both the talk Mags had given me: you get one last wish. 

The girl didn't want her mom to see her starve. Which was an easy one. She wasn't likely to starve in the arena. But the boy had an outlook that was not typical in Twelve. 

"I ain't gonna die." He was resolute. "I'm going home to Maryallen." 

There was a hard look in his eyes, like the Careers. A look I'd never had. He believed he could actually do it. He believed it so hard, he was starting to convince me. Could Maston Enner do what I didn't? Win this thing, go home to the girl he loved, and live? Effie's eyes met mine over the table. Did we have a victor on our hands? 

Between the stylists and the prep teams, and Effie chewing out my tailor on the phone, and the fact that the vicors were all expected to appear on camera behind Templesmith at the tribute parade this year, I didn't get to talk to her again until after the kids went to bed that night. 

I was nursing the same glass of whiskey I had been since before dinner, knowing she wasn't going to be sympathetic if I had another hangover the next day, but she still managed to shoot the rocks glass in my hand such a withering look I thought the glass might crack when she sat down on the sofa beside me. 

She closed the little notebook and we both just....stared at each other. 

"Maston." I stated. Effie just nodded. "He's....." 

I didn't quite have the word, but Effie supplied. 

"He has a certain ferocity." That was it. The hunger in his eyes. The raw determination. "It reminded me of....." 

"Me?" 

"No." 

"Who?" 

"Maysilee." 

Maysilee, with her hair ribbons and braided cords and necklaces and pretty dresses. Maysilee, with the mouth on her, standing up to Drusilla, to anyone who dared talk down to us. Yeah. She was completely right about that. 

"I had my money on her, you know?" She offered quietly. I looked up from the last remaining piece of ice my eyes had been chasing around the bottom of my glass to find her looking out the window, pensive. Ok. This was going to be a strange conversation. But I was running with it. So was she. She kept talking. "My Capitol Cohorts chapter always did, well, does, I'm just not allowed to bet anymore, a little informal 50/50 pool and donated the proceeds to the library. I usually went with a nice safe one or two, but after meeting Maysilee? My money was immediately on her. I'd never seen a person quite like her before. There was a rage and a determination in her eyes that haunted me. I thought, well, if that arena was going to produce a victor from anything that wasn't a career district it would have to be her." 

It was the most inexplicable thing, but in that moment, I was strangely jealous of her support of Maysilee. Effie was MY escort. The person who'd said goodbye to ME and put ME in the arena. I didn't like the fact that those hands that had trembled adjusting my uniform had lay down money against my life. 

"What? Not me?" 

Effie looked back at me from the window, as if she just remembered I was in the room with her, and the absolute heartbreak on her eyebrowless face as she reached out and grabbed my hand between hers was enough to banish that strange little bit of jealousy for good. 

"Oh my sweet Haymitch...." I could hear that little tremble she was fighting to keep out of her voice. "My dear, kind boy. You had a training score of one. You had eyes so haunted you may have already been a ghost. And more besides, I already knew exactly who you were, who you by some small miracle still are, and everyone knows that kindness and compassion can never survive the Hunger Games." 

That hung heavy between us. I realized the hands she was holding were trembling and I wasn't sure in that moment if it was her hands shaking or mine. I was staring at her, locked in on bright blue teary eyes just as I had been in that tube, like by just staying connected to someone for a few seconds longer I could hold on to life, to humanity, to myself for just a few more seconds. Effie did herself the same credit she had that day. She never looked away, she never backed down. She was right where I needed her to be. Always. And she knew what I needed, just as she somehow always had. She opened her arms and let me fall across the awkward distance between us to rest against her, holding me, stroking my hair, humming soft, nonsensical reassurances as she did. And abruptly, I knew exactly who she was. Effie was exactly what she thought I was; she was kind. Above everything else, above the shallow Capitol drivel and misplaced sense of duty. She was kind to people. Like a lone dandelion growing up through a crack in an expanse of dry dead pavement, somehow this little bright spot of kindness had survived the death by decadence that was the Capitol to become my escort.

I shifted, slipping down a little so I was laying across the sofa with my head in her lap, rather than leaning my face awkwardly against her stomach. Her puffy yellow skirt was pillow soft and her hand in my hair was soothing and I felt like I was near to drifting off, so I was startled when she spoke again. 

"Maysilee....did she get her one last want?" She asked. I turned to look up at her, confused. "You tell them every year, that you were told you get one last wish in the arena and it costs you everything you are so....did she get it?" 

I thought about Maysilee. Her fork. Her airs. How she was determined to maintain her civility and dignity, to the very end. I thought of her dying in my arms, silently, seething with that same fire that she'd carried her whole life. I thought of how so little of her had been erased, edited out. She still came off as the clever, stubborn, indomitable priss she was. She painted her own poster. Entirely.

"Yes." 

"Good." 

She let me fall asleep in her lap. I woke up the next morning with no hangover and a thick blanket tucked around me. 

I threw everything I had in me behind Maston, and left Hetty entirely to Effie. Neither girl seemed to object. Hetty didn't have survival in mind, but she was strangely content to let Effie treat her like a princess. Apparently she had seven sisters at home. I guess the quiet was nice. I was with Maston from sunup to sundown, keeping him fed, talking him through the techniques I'd been taught, watching over his training from the observation lounge over the training centers with the likes of the career mentors and, for some reason, Wiress and Beetee.

 Wiress kept trying to bring me bits of bread and fruit and cheese from the banquet-like spread laid out up there for the mentors, but I was consumed with trying to find clues to the arena, like Beetee had taught me. Try as I might, though, I couldn't find anything. Their training was generic, combat focused. Dull. Still, Maston was strong, he held his own sparring with Fours, even Twos. And it was heartening to hear Wiress speaking a little more, even if most of the things she murmured to Beetee or myself were deeply inexplicable. Beetee seemed to understand her, and that was enough for her. She clung to him, and when she wasn't at his side because he'd rushed off to the hall to have a whispered conversation with Plutarch, she sat next to me, putting little bits of food in my hand and waiting till I'd popped them into my mouth or slipped them into my pocket to press another cracker or grape into my hand. 

My mentor. Every vague smile twisted my guts with guilt so bad I'd almost rather be dragging them behind me again. Almost. 

Lyme spent most of those three training days sitting beside me, chewing her lip as she watched her own tribute. Two had more than enough victors, so this was her first year as a mentor, and she was clearly more than a little nervous about it. Her hands were shredding the corners of the little stats notebook a lot of the twos carried to pieces as she twisted and rolled the paper between her giant fingers, flinching every time her kid took a hit in practice. We didn't talk much, but she always made sure to leave space for Wiress when Beetee left her with me, and let me borrow her pencil without asking when I forgot mine. The Twos seemed to enjoy watching the training, even those who weren't mentoring, like it was a sort of sports game. They reminded me of the kind of boys in school that always roved in a pack, not because they were overly fond of each other, but because of the way they all excelled at basketball and baseball. Burdie and I had never ran afoul of that crowd, but we were hardly one of them. Funny, I'd have just graduated this year with both of them if .......

I let Wiress putting a grape in my hand distract me from that train of thought. I offered it to Lyme and she took it, happy to have something to chew on that wasn't her rapidly reddening bottom lip. 

Maston had been a member of that P. E. inclined pack of boys in school, and it showed. By day three of training he'd actually managed to beat both Two tributes with a sword at least once, out lifted the Elevens, and could outrun every damn kid in there. The Twos were counting him as a serious threat, and congratulating me on his performance, like his strength was some inexplicable reflection of me. Maybe it was in Career land. Career victors were weird like that. But when Lyme finally left for the last time on the final day of training, she hugged me close and whispered in my ear. 

"I really do hope it's you this year, Haymitch." It was always a shock to hear such a gentle voice coming out of such a large person. "I hate thinking about you alone all year." 

I liked her. 

Maston scored equal to her tribute in his training score that night. A nine. Effie screamed with joy, pulling him into a tight hug, while he just beamed up at his own face staring down from the screen. She bubbled happily all through supper, talking no end about their outfits for the interview the next day and ordering at least three desserts. Even Hetty seemed in a good mood for someone who had resigned herself to death. Her training score, a three, left little to cheer about, but she was wearing a pair of giant earrings that I knew for a fact were Effie's and she smiled every time she shook her head and made them jingle. I was the only one pensively pushing my food around my plate, trying to figure out how I was going to get him through his interview the next day. 

He wasn't particularly intelligent. Not particularly charming. Hell, he wasn't particularly likeable. He was determined, but the kind of determined that the Capitol would find threatening, not endearing. In the end, I decided on a strategy not unlike my own; a rascal. He had a nice, slightly crooked smile. He could talk about his brothers and his girl back home, and be a little snarky, a little cocky. The problem was it kept coming off more like the Jackass I'd been edited into than the charmer I was going for. He was just a little too aggressive. I drilled him over and over again on the right way to smile, the time to soften a statement with a laugh, just how to pause to add a touch of humor...it was falling on deaf ears. Still, by the time he was dragged away to be primped and polished up by his prep team and Effie dragged me away to pin me into yet another slightly too big suit, I felt I'd done something passable with him. Jackass had worked for me. Maybe the Capitol types were into that. 

I paced behind the stage of the Flickerman set like a caged tiger in my pinned down suit, fiddling mindlessly with the watch fob Effie had carefully pinned in place over my midsection. I knew I was messing it up, and that she'd huff at me when she inevitably had to fix it, but I couldn't help it. I hadn't been this nervous when it had been my own life I was fighting for, but with Maston on the line? I felt like I was going to throw up. 

Effie was the one who pulled me aside, just as the threes were mounting the stage for their interview. 

"Haymitch." Her voice was sharp, but the furrow between her missing brown was the worried one, not the angry one. I fell still at her side. "Are you quite alright? You're making the children nervous!" 

I looked up at the line of tributes, all various degrees of wide eyed and overwhelmed looking, who were lined up to go onstage. Maston stood at the back looking mildly green. I gave him a halfhearted smile and a wave that he didn't return. I hadn't thought to ask if he got stage fright during our interview prep, but a vague memory of him getting nervous and throwing up all over Mrs. Conner's eighth grade history classroom in the middle of his final presentation began to surface, and suddenly I felt as ill as he looked. 

"Why don't you go find yourself something to drink?" Effie suggested, firm hand on my arm guiding me towards the door. I hadn't been drinking much, wrapped up as I was in Maston's chances, and she was probably right to suggest it, but I still stared at her, surprised. She nodded me toward door again. "I'll take care of the children here. You go. Find Mags. Or that tall fellow from Eleven. Meet us in the tower after. You're just making everyone nervous." 

Effie was some sort of angel, I decided for the hundredth time that year.

I felt better as soon as I was out in the hall, making my way to the bar and lounge where the non-mentor victors were watching the interviews with the game makers and the sponsors who either hadn't gotten tickets to the live event or were too alcoholic to go the whole three hours of the taping without drinking. And Effie was right about me feeling a lot better once I'd knocked back a pair of shots. I was able to just sit on a weird marble stool in the corner of the room, nursing a brandy and watching Three's boy banter with Caesar.

He was larger than the usual Threes, and a looker too, with glowing brown skin and eyes that sparkled like moonlight under the neons of the stage. The longer he bantered with Caesar, the more apparent it became that Beetee had gone with the same strategy that I myself had chosen: Charmer by way of Jackass. And he was pulling it off much better. I felt the hope draining out of me faster than I was draining the glass in my hand. 

I had thought Beetee would be celebrating, or at least would be up by the Flickerman Studios floor with his kids after a performance that triumphant, but it wasn't but a few moments later when the girl from Four was carrying on about rope rigging or something else to do with boats that I realized Wiress was roaming through the sponsors lounge on her own. She looked a little lost, and made a seat for herself next to a potted plant on a sofa in the corner, muttering at her hands. I looked around for Beetee, but he was nowhere to be seen, and when I looked back at Wiress she was no longer alone. There was a man sitting on the sofa beside her. Or some sort of exotic insect disguised as a man. His eyebrowless face was pressed up close to the side of hers, and the bright yellow dangling thing he wore on his head kept bumping into her forehead. Wiress looked like she was trying to make herself as small as possible, but the yellow and black suited creature kept leaning closer to her and something about the smile on his face made my stomach turn funny. 

I wasn't really conscious of the decision, but it seems seconds later I had hopped up out of my chair and was across the room, inserting myself on that couch between Wiress and the man. 

"Sorry 'bout that." I said to him with a smile as I pressed myself into the narrow gap between them. He was forced to scoot over to make way and looked mildly confused at having someone tell him what to do for once. "Wiress, I was supposed to come find you, your escort is looking for you." 

Wiress, naturally, looked awful confused. Three's escort, as a rule, didn't give a shit where her victors or tributes were most the time, but the unfortunate wasp looking man who was making Wiress uncomfortable did not know that, and I was able to pull her away with little more than an apologetic nod to his strange pointed face. I towed her out into the hall, down past the elevators, where it got quiet and mostly unused, before she seemed to calm down, and stopped that ringing of her palms that she picked up when that man sat down next to her. She didn't thank me. Not with her words anyway. She set her forehead down on my shoulder for a second, and I knew what she meant. 

"Well, I wasn't gonna to leave you in there with him." I reassured, looping my arm through hers and leaning up against some sort of odd oblong artwork. At least that's what Effie called the strange sinister shapeless metallic blobs that dotted the hallways at various intervals. Artwork. Sculpture. I thought they looked vaguely like medieval torture devices out of history book. 

"Where is Beetee anyway?" I asked. "I ain't seen him leave you alone yet this year." 

Wireless looked up from the spot on the carpet she'd been staring at, and her empty face rearranged itself into a distinct frown. She inhaled. Then exhaled. Then inhaled again, before she managed to eke out a few words in a small hesitant voice.

"Most wars were fought more over financial interests than anything else." 

It was a damn strange sentence. I had no idea what the hell she meant. Seeing the confusion on my face, she rolled her eyes grabbed my hand and started towing me deeper into the Games Center than I had ever been before. As we walked past hallways and closed doors, the character of the place changed. Plush carpets and luxe wallpapers and those ridiculous sculptures, gave way to simple laminate flooring, neutral paint, plain metal furnishings. At some point I realized we'd turned corner, and we're in a whole different wing now. A much more simple place. A working space, I realized, probably some sort of offices for the organization of The Hunger Games. Maybe this is where the Game Makers did their work before they went off to the arena to run it. Still Wiress seemed to know where she was going, so I followed. 

She stopped abruptly, and for a moment I couldn't tell why, but she pointed to her ear, and when I paid attention I could hear the faint sound of voices. Two voices. One deep, with that characteristic wide Three accent, one higher, with a nasality that could only be Capitol. Silently, we both got closer, close enough to hear the tone of the conversation. It was angry. Less of a conversation, more of an argument I realized. The voices weren't raised, but there was vitriol in the hushed whispers. 

".... You really think after your disastrous showing last time that there's any wisdom in your foolish, and may I say frankly emotionally driven, ideas?" 

I recognized the voice now. Plutarch Heavensbee. And I can't say I was glad to hear it. 

The second voice replied with a tight anger. 

"I see you don't see any of this as worth being emotional about, which tells me everything I need to know about you as a person. I don't think we ever should have trusted you." 

Beetee. It was Beetee. More worked up than I had ever heard him before. But I did agree with his sentiment. 

Plutarch laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. 

"You try this, and I will give you all something to be emotional about." He spat. I couldn't quite say why but my blood ran cold at that statement, and Wiress's cold hand slipped into mine, giving it a gentle squeeze. 

”Would you like to tell me what the fuck that's supposed to mean? I swear if you have....." 

I sneezed. The dried out air-cooled air made me sneeze a lot. Both men feel silent, and a second later they had both emerged from behind one of the many closed bland doors, wearing matching expressions of panic and blinding rage. Beetee's face softened when he saw Wiress and I. Plutarch's.... well it didn't exactly soften. He slipped back into his mask-like banal smile and look down his pug nose at the pair of us. 

"Haymitch...." He drolled, voice like rotten honey, sweet but wrong. "However did the pair of you find us?" 

Wiress had released my arm and went to Beetee's side to whisper something in his ear. He nodded, and looked at me fondly. 

"We're needed in the lounge." He announced, and took off with Wiress on his arm. Wiress snagged my wrist on her way past, so I found myself being towed back along those beige hallways, this time at something of a punishing pace, as we were both dragged by a livid Beetee. 

"What was that all about?" I asked, when we got to the corner that marked the change between the more decorative wing and the working wing, and Beetee finally slowed down enough that we could catch our breath. Beetee nearly jumped when I spoke, and pushed the three of us behind the first of those big ugly statues, looking around as though peacekeepers were going to pop out of the walls to get us any second. 

"Nothing!" Was his sharp reply. Wiress tugged on his sleeve and frowned sternly at him. He met her eyes for a moment, then sighed and relented, speaking to me in a more even keel. "Look, Haymitch, it's probably best if you don't get involved with any of this." 

Involved with... 

It dawned on me abruptly. Beetee. Plutarch. Secret plans. Quiet meetings beyond where the cameras were pointed. 

They were doing it again. Trying something like they tried with me. Using another kid as a sacrifice. 

"I think you already got me involved." I said. It was my turn for a bit of coldness. Beetee, to his credit, looked a little ashamed. 

"That was different. You were a tribute. You said you wanted to make your death matter. No one intended for you to.....”

"Survive?" I finished, and the word hung between us with a physical presence. "And you're doing it again? To some poor kid who you don't intend to survive? Who this time?" 

I swore on more graves than I could count that if he said the name of my boy I was going to whoop his ass so good he wouldn't walk for a month. 

"Ours." 

Well. It wasn't mine. But I thought of that boy up there, with his charm and his gleaming dark eyes. I couldn't imagine being willing to sacrifice him, rather than giving everything I had to bring him home, to give him a chance at a life. 

"He volunteered." Beetee said, like he'd read my mind. 

"He's a child. He doesn't know what he's signing up for. He doesn't know what it could cost.” I snapped. 

"And you do?" Beetee fired back. I knew exactly what cost he was referring to. 

"If I'd known the cost I'd never have gotten involved. Cause the cost I was promised was my own life..." 

”Don't pretend you're not grateful you survived." He scoffed. 

"I would be grateful if I had a wife and baby to return home to." I shot right back. "But I don't. My cost was any reason to survive. So don't tell me I ought to be grateful."

Wiress stepped between us, place in a cold palm in the center of both of our chests. We both stepped down, going silent for a second. I was the first to speak up again. 

"I want in."

I wasn't even sure why I said it. It was an impulsive three words. I didn't even really want to be a part of their plans, part of long list of failures and sacrifices. But for a moment it was like my voice was not my own... And I knew whose voice it was speaking. My girl. My lost Lenore. That was her passion. That was the promise she had extracted from me with her dying breath. Be a part of it. End this. 

Beetee's head snapped towards me, shocked. 

Well hell, in for a penny, in for a pound. Besides, being on their side meant they were less likely to use my tribute as television fodder. 

"I mean it. If you're up to something, I want in." 

Beetee nodded. 

"Then you will be." He said. 

I felt like I had just signed a deal with the devil. 

"But right now we only need to put our faces back where they're supposed to be before we're missed." 

He was right. I actually made it back to the sponsors lounge in time to see Maston turn green on live television, and throw up all over Caesar Flickerman. 

Well, it wasn't great for his chances. But damn, it felt good see that cocky Flickerman covered in sick, trying so hard to maintain his composure. And I could tell from the snickers coming from the other victors around the room that I wasn't the only one who held the television host in particularly low regard. The Capitol cockatoos however, were thoroughly scandalized, tittering to each other like the ticked off birds they so deeply resembled. It seemed all hope for any sponsors were dead. 

But when our girl took the stage, I was surprised. I had to admit, I'd written her off. Slender, weak, not much of a fighter and given to crying, she really hadn't given me much to work with in the ways of presenting a champion. Effie however seemed to have seen something completely different. I knew she'd been working with the stylist, and Hetty practically twinkled in a gown that clung to her like diamond dust falling in shimmering waves and pools. Her long dark hair was set in beautiful waves, and the glimmer and gleam of her dress was reflected in a series of stones that made her hair look like a field of stars. Those earrings Effie had given her sparkled in her ears. If you would told me she was one of them styled up pretty One tributes, instead of a starving girl from the Seam, I'd have believed you. 

Graceful as a swan, she swept across the stage, sitting delicately beside Caesar as though she was made to be in front of an audience. She had their attention. And she spoke well. Effie must have been coaching her, cause even with the Twelve accent she sounded soft, dainty, glamorous even, as she described in poetic detail how much the last few days of being treated like a princess meant to someone who her whole life had only known hand me downs. The audience awwed and cooed and laughed along with her every word. She had them in the palm of her hand. And when she told Caesar she would fight to the death for the opportunity to be this beautiful everyday for the rest of her life.... That stupid sponsorship tablet I had to carry around made a noise.

I looked down. And there on its glassy glowing surface I saw a number beginning to count up. 100 dollars. 400. 900. 2000. As she took her bows and the show ended, I was looking at a total of 4,000 dollars. I don't think Twelve had ever had that much sponsorship money in its entire history. 

I booked it out of the sponsor's lounge, sprinted for the elevators, and made it up to the penthouse about the same time Effie and the kids did, and I flung my arms around that girl so hard she practically fell down in shock, and we were both lucky there was another of those ugly statues in living room to catch us. 

"Haymitch, what in the name of propriety..." Effie began, but I held the tablet out towards her, waving it wildly, and the growing number on the screen quieted her. 

"My God......" She whispered. Then absolutely screeched with joy. 

”And it was all you!" I practically sang, whirling around on the shocked Hetty who was standing agape against the wall in her pretty dress. "What you done up there in that interview got the Capitol on your side, and with this money I might be able to keep you alive!" 

Her mouth dropped open at the number she saw. 

"That's money?" She asked. I nodded. "I didn't even know there was that much money in the whole world!" She laughed. Then she looked over at poor Maston, who was still standing next to the door looking queasy. She waved him over to come look, then looked back up at me. "It's for both of us right? The money? You going to help both of us?" 

I nodded. Maston looked relieved. 

The penthouse went to bed in good spirits that night.

Unfortunately, the next morning was a chilling reminder of reality, when my kids were whisked away before dawn to be prepared for the arena. 

"Any last minute advice?" Maston asked as he was escorted past Effie and I. 

What could I say? I thought about Wiress's little rhyme: first avoid the slaughter, find weapons, look for water. But there was no time. No time to fill his head with anything new. He'd have to rely on the training I give him all week. There was nothing else to say but: 

"Stay alive." 

I think he understood the sentiment. 

Effie wanted us to try and go back to sleep for a few hours, before I had to get up and get all primped polished and pushed into something that didn't fit for yet another round of the sponsors lounge, but I couldn't stop my shaking. I didn't want to go back into that bedroom by myself. I didn't want a door to close behind me. Didn't want to think about the gilded cage I was in. Didn't want to be reminded of the gorgeous cage I killed in. Effie relented. We sat silently together on the oversized couch watching the sun come up through the giant windows. If I may have dropped off on her shoulder and got in a couple more minutes sleep here and there, she didn't begrudge me. She was all too silent till it came time to fight with my suit again. This one was a horrible sparkling confection of stones set on black satin that called to mind Hetty's dress from last night, and matched Effie's equally sparkling black satin mini dress perfectly. As much as I hated it, I realized what she was doing. She was keeping that interview performance fresh in the sponsors' minds, hopefully to keep their wallets open. So I let her fuss over the suit and pin it in tighter, swearing at the tailor the whole time because she swore she gave him my measurements last year and there was certainly no way I was getting smaller! 

With five seconds left she screamed: 

"I love you, Eula May!" 

Eula May. Her sister. 

Then, before the countdown ended, she stepped off her platform. 

I understood why she did it. There was no escape for her. She was about to be torn apart by the Careers in an arena that favored the strong. She saw her odds and seized the one thing she wanted: for her family to not have to watch her suffer and starve and die ugly. And to her mind, it was a clean death. Just a quick explosion and it was all over. Nobody had to suffer. 

And I suppose it was a clean death...for her. But for everyone watching, it was horrifying. The explosion that killed her was sudden and violent, and she was blown into a thousand tiny pieces. 

A thousand tiny blood red pieces that sprayed across the grey concrete, in horrifying splotches of gore that were the only color in the bleak arena. The only bright, brutal color, painting the pile of weapons with her still warm flesh and splattering all that grey concrete with her crimson blood. 

Her family would have to live with that image forever. 

Even her fellow tributes were coated in what remained of the girl who'd sparkled so beautifully last night. 

I barely registered what happened after the Games began. I felt sick. There were cameras in my face begging for comment but my tongue was lead in my mouth and all I could taste was blood. 

Red. Blood. Red flying everywhere. Red and tiny scraps of electric blue and flashbulbs and cameras all dripping with so much blood that I was choking on it and how could they expect me to answer when my lungs were filling up with blood and flesh and ash and...

"...as he's still living, he will need his mentor to be able to focus!" 

Effie's voice drifted into my ear and her pointed nails dug into my forearm. Those claws were dragging me up from a bog of bloody burials, till her voice beside me sounded like it was where it was supposed to be, not some thousand miles yonder. 

She was dismissing the cameras, dragging me away, talking about my tribute needing me. 

Maston. Maston was alive. He'd gotten a knife and sprinted out. He was alive and I needed to get it together and bring him home. But her voice was just as tight as mine, and I could feel the rabbiting of her pulse in her wrists as she dragged me, still stumbling through bodies only I could see, out of the lounge and into the elevator to shoot up into the sky to safety. 

Effie's hand didn't unclench from my arm till we were seated in the living room, with our screens turned to follow Maston. We watched together, in silence, as he ran out into the concrete wasteland, sharing our ragged tears over Hetty's abrupt demise. He managed to climb some rebar scaffolding, and hole himself up on the remains of a third floor that hadn't quite fallen in. He was safe. Hidden. And I was free to turn my eyes to the rest of the arena, and to that precious money on the tablet. Only then, slowly, did Effie's fingers uncurl from their death grip on my arm. Only then did I look up and realize that great tracts of silver mascara had streaked their way down her face with silent tears. I let her quietly slip away, only to return once her face was back to being a perfect mask of inexplicable makeup, while I made sense of the arena. 

It was definitely a combat focused one. Most of it was covered in crumbling concrete, with the occasional break for a rusted metal husk of a car, some scaffolding or metal infrastructure remains, and the occasional busted electrical appliances. The husks of fifty and sixty story high concrete monstrosities of buildings rose in a grid like pattern, but the arena offered little to climb up into them. There was little but bugs to eat. No one had yet found any water. This was going to be an arena dependent on gifts and combat. Hetty had possibly saved Maston's life with her interview and her sacrifice. With only the one of them alive, I had more than enough to keep him fed and watered, if I spaced it out correctly.

I had no idea how long I had been sitting there, silently scratching out calculations on one of Effie's clipboards to determine exactly how much food and drink I could get in the arena with the budget I had. Other supplies nonwithstanding. He'd taken nothing but a tiny knife that was thrown at him and missed from the Cornucopia, choosing instead to use the pandemonium to flee unseen and find his hiding place. And it was a good one. The Career pack passed his building twice, never thinking to try and climb up to that sliver of uncolapsed third floor to see if anyone was up there. I was starting to think he might be able to just pull a Wiress and outlast.....when night fell. 

Night? 

I tore my head away from my screens to find the light that was typically streaming in those ridiculous floor to ceiling windows only to see...black. A dark sky and the twinkle of city lights below. It was night. When had it become night? Wasn't it just the cornucopia? At ten in the morning? 

For a moment I felt my heart leap into my throat. The only place where day and night were inconsistent like that was in the arena. And I was momentarily blindsided by a bolt of panic, that somehow, despite the evidence of my eyes and ears, they managed to put me back in and finish what they started. I grabbed the pocket watch that Effie habitually tucked into my waistcoat pockets to check, and lo and behold it corroborated the sun's story. Somehow, I'd been focused and seemingly unmoving the whole day through. When I sat back, the wrenching stiffness in the scar across my middle corroborated that story just as well. Well damn. 

Effie was curled up in one of the big armchairs at the end of the couch with her shoes off and her legs tucked under her. It looked like she'd fallen asleep with her own clipboard, she was snoring softly through slightly parted purple lips, and the pen she was using to take notes on other tributes' locations had slipped out of her open hand and was sitting on the floor at the foot of her chair. When I groaned at the stiffness in my scar, however, she jolted awake so fast her magenta hair came askew, and I realized, for the first time, that it wasn't really her hair. Suppose it made sense. She had about four hair colors in the last week, and I wasn't quite sure how a body was to pull that off. 

Effie called for some dinner, while I sent some jerky, bread and water in to our boy, and I had to say, there was some satisfaction in being able to do something from the outside to help him. Seeing him huddled there in the dark, fed, safe. Again, I felt that flicker of hope. 

It didn't last long. 

After dark was when that arena got terrifying. The whole place was swept with waves of vicious nocturnal mutts. These were some horrifying looking creatures. I think they were meant to resemble coyotes or raccoons, maybe possums, but they couldn't have been further from the real creatures. They were skeletal for one, and looked half decayed, still walking. Their eyes glowed dangerous radioactive green in the dark, and they foamed and frothed the mouth, hissing, rabid and hungry for blood. They took out three tributes that first night. Tore them to tiny little shreds. They didn't even bother picking up the bodies after the cannons went off. There was nothing left to pick up. And I found myself glad I hadn't eaten much of the dinner that I brought up, or I'd have been sick again watching. The few minutes of sleep I got shortly before dawn were plagued with half waking dreams of blood, and bits of flesh, and thousands and thousands of rabid squirrels with glowing green eyes. 

Days dragged on like that. In the mornings Effie would dress me in the suit of the day, drag me down to the sponsor's lounge, let me try to start the day down there. I was single-mindedly focused on every single thing Maston did. Not that he was doing much. The other tributes had figured out the whole climbing thing trying to keep away from the horrible mutts at night, so he'd had to vacate that first hiding spot and had taken to creeping around, staying up broken staircases, and crawling out onto damaged support beams. Hiding. Smart boy. The Career pack was having a good year. They hunted by day. It was like I couldn't tear my eyes away from it. I hoped and prayed every time they cut back to them, that their victim would be someone else, anyone but my boy. I would usually get myself so worked up that by the afternoon Effie had to remove me from what she called "polite society" and what Shell called "the parade of predatory peacocks", and I finished my watching and sent my gifts for the day from back up in Twelve before all the tributes hunkered down for the evening to stay away from those hideous mutts. I often stayed awake as long as I could, watching over Maston by night, as if there was something I could do by just witnessing. 

Six days of this later, we made it to the top ten. It was five of the careers, both Threess, the boy from Eight, the girl from Ten, and Maston. Effie was in an absolutely fantastic mood, and took to handling most of the cameras and sponsors for me, which was a blessing. She had a way with them. A way of charming them and sounding like she was saying just the right thing while she was actually saying nothing at all. I suppose she didn't really know the strategies that I had set out for Maston and training, but it wasn't like we hadn't been talking through them over the past few days. She just chose to let nothing on when questioned. Like a sparkling smokescreen. 

I was also somewhat peripherally aware that I hadn't seen much of Beetee in the days that I was down in the sponsors lounge. Wiress was usually parked at Mags' side or with another really old fellow they called Fritz, who I hadn't realized was also from Three, who kept giving her various technical guides to read. She seemed to like the one about insects. Sometimes she would come and sit by me, and just point excitedly at a bug in her book. I felt bad that I wasn't really paying attention, but any second I didn't spend with my eyes glued to my tribute, felt like I could fail him somehow. 

I did occasionally check up on how the District Three tributes were doing, though. I noticed they weren't being shown on the main edits hardly at all. Suppose that made sense, if they were up to some Beetee inspired nonsense same as I had been. I wondered how much of my exploits they actually showed. When you were in there you either forgot about the cameras all together or you were intimately aware of them, but I suppose either could be true at any point...the Capitol chose what parts they were going to show. Not us. As far as I could tell though, Beetee's tributes weren't searching for anything. They managed to get themselves up to the 15th floor of a building, goodness only knows how, and were both hard at work stripping that building of anything useful and building a..... well a something. Frankly I didn't want to know and didn't care that much as long as Maston was still alive. And, somehow, Maston was still alive. 

The next morning, Beetee dropped down next to Effie and I on a sofa and the sponsor's lounge, just as the day's coverage was beginning. He took advantage of my escort's distraction, as she was watching an interview with herself from the day before up on the biggest screen, to lean into my ear and whisper: 

"When it happens, we talk to their cameras. We don't let them sweep it under the rug." 

That was all he said. But I saw him, cozy enough to most of us, with the exception of the Ones and Twos. I heard him saying the same thing to Chaff at the bar later in the day. When it happens......

It happened that night. The mutts had tangled with the Career pack, taking out both the Twos somehow, and the other four were running scared. I was glued to the edge of my seat up in the penthouse. If the mutts took out the careers, that greatly improved Maston's chances. I only had enough money to keep him fed and watered for a day or two more....

Suddenly, the arena went completely blacked out, no moon no stars no nothing. I switched from Mason's camera back to the main coverage to see what was happening, only to find the cameras on the Threes. They hooked up the whatever-they-built to a funny looking heavy piece of rebar that was sticking straight up out of the ground and it was sending off horrible electric green sparks every which way, but both Threes were laughing, and the arena itself had gone haywire. The sky above was rapidly flashing in tones of black and green like lightning, the earth itself was trembling, and those mutts that had been chasing the careers, they turned on each other and tore each other to shreds. The eight surviving tributes had their heads all poked out of their hiding places, staring at the sky in terror just trying to figure out what was going on, and the girl from Three spoke into a funny looking part of the device they built, and her voice was amplified across the whole arena. 

"Try to have fun, Haymitch!" She reminded, waving from the door as the elevator closed behind us and we went downstairs to pick up Eleven's victors before being shown to this massive black marble lobby down on the sponsor floors.  

There were more Peacekeepers waiting there than I expected, silently standing by all the exits and flanking the massive gold doors in the center, clutching their guns and staring blankly behind their visors. Something made me take a step closer to Chaff as our escort led the four of us, myself and the three Eleven victors, up to those gold doors that were emanating a thumping sort of music.

"You'll enter one at a time." The Peacekeeper barked, nodding Chaff through the door. Seeder followed him a minute later. Roota, the oldest Eleven victor, took my hand and gave it a squeeze before she dissapeared through the gold doors, leaving me along in the empty marble reception hall with all those peacekeepers. 

My heart was hammering in my throat as I tried to recall Effie's words. It was just a party. Everyone I liked would be there. There was no reason to be so nervous. God, I wanted to feel the comforting press of her gloved hand on my back. 

With a nod, the peacekeeper ushered me through the door. 

And for a moment I had no idea where I was. 

It was dark. So dark I couldn't make anything out. Some sort of foreign electronic music so loud it made my head spin pounded through the air. I could feel the thump of it through the floor. Neon bright spotlights like the ones from Flickerman studios pierced the heavy dark like neon spears, wheeling around through the dark, illuminating figures just long enough to determine that there were people moving in the room but not long enough to figure out what was going on, before they struck me in the eyes, blinding me utterly, then flashing away again, leaving me more in the dark than before. 

"Haymitch Abernathy, District Twelve!" a voice boomed, startling me, and I could hear the noise of a crowd. Whether they were cheering, laughing, or screaming, however, I couldn't tell. 

Both my arms were grabbed. I was still too disoriented by the dark and light to make out who was holding me, or where they were taking me, though, so I let myself be dragged down into the seething crowd. I was trying to catch a glimpse of someone, anyone, I knew in the dim. Chaff hadn't gone in too long before me. He couldn't be far. But people were streaming past like a tornado of colors and hands reaching out. I thought I heard a familiar voice scream my name, but when I looked up to try and find the source I was blinded by another one of those freewheeling neon beams of light, and stumbled over the shiny stiff shoes Effie had picked out for me. The two, who I now realized were Peacekeepers, didn't slow. They half dragged me across the floor and up an elevated platform and tossed me down on something. I felt cold metal close around one wrist, then the other, and my arms were wrenched back, over my head. I was shoved back onto a table. To my credit, I kicked out at the Peacekeeper shoving me into my place, but all I got for my trouble was my legs strapped down to what felt like the table I was on. I was screaming like hell, but there was no hearing me over the pounding music and screaming of the crowd below. 

Then the music stopped. The flashing neon lights went still. Without it all I was able to take stock of the room, straining my shoulders and pulling against the handcuffs enough to sit up a bit and see around me. It was huge, black marble like the hall outside. Raised platforms like the one I was on ringed the room, with figures secured, like me, to tables and chairs on each of them, but it was too dim to make out faces. All the lights in the room had turned to point towards the highest platform, at the head of the long room.

Mags was up there, hands bound behind her, flanked by two Peacekeepers, and struggling like hell. Her lower lip was bloodied. I heard a scream when the light landed on her that I knew was Shell, but I had no idea where he was. Beside her was, to my mind, the smiling figure of Satan himself. 

President Fucking Snow. 

There was a roar when he stepped into the light. The crowd below sounded thrilled, but I heard some familiar voices cursing his name. He held his hand up and they all fell silent. All but one. An older Victor from Nine. I barely knew him but he couldn't have been much younger than Mags. He kept up his swearing. 

"....should have taken you all out when we had the chance! Fucking Capitol pig. I'd kill you all without batting a eye! You're barely human!" 

President Snow only looked mildly inconvenienced by this ranting. He nodded to a peacekeeper with the two sinister words: "Silence him". A moment later, I heard the crunch of the butt of a gun against the delicate bones of a face. I couldn't twist far enough to see where he was, but the sounds of boots and metal against flesh were telling enough. Mags was practically snarling, and the President grabbed her hair, taking a fistful of the greying curls and forcing her to look down at the man being beaten. He whispered something in her ear and her whole face went white and she fell still. 

Snow looked like a cat who got the cream. 

"Happy Hunger Games!" He continued. "Now, I have the privilege of ushering in a new era of the Hunger Games. I have heard the anxiety that you, my oldest and most loyal supporters have expressed about the ways the Games are changing, and I want to reassure you that I have not, for a moment, lost sight of the true reason for the Games. I suffered and starved though the Dark Days with you. I lost my father to rebel hands. I will never forget." 

Looking around, I was finally able to get a glimpse of the crowd. They were, predominantly, older. Snow's own age. And dressed in the restrained opulence that Effie always said characterized the true elites. But there were more than a fair share of the terrifying looking, surgically altered faces among them. They were hanging on Snow's every word. 

"But as a new generation rises that has been blessed with peace and prosperity, hard won and harder kept, we must take steps to ensure that they always know the natural order of things. That they know their place, overseeing this order from the top and reaping the benefits therin. So, in that spirit, I will be allowing new, unprecedented access to our victors. For a healthy donation to the games, our sponsors will now be able to enjoy uninhibited private access to any victor they so choose, thus keeping funding and interest flowing for generations to come, so that we may always enjoy these great Games and all they stand for!" 

A great cheer rose up from the crowd. The lights all pivoted off Snow, and I was momentarily blinded once again as my platform, like all the others, was illuminated. Now I could make out the figures bound on them. 

It was us. The victors. 

Just like Effie had said, all my friends were here, tied to tables and chairs and bars, struggling and staring and looking helplessly up at Mags standing beside Snow for some guidance. She stared at us, stoic. 

He spoke again, the fucking serpent. 

"In celebration of this new method of sponsorship, I am offering you, my oldest and most loyal supporters, this little preview. All of the finest fruits of our Districts are here before you, presented for your enjoyment. Enjoy the bounty of Panem. Happy Hunger Games!" 

With that, he left the platform. He left the room. It was just Mags, flanked by Peacekeepers, staring down at us. The whole room was still for a moment, then I heard a voice, Mariposa's voice, quietly speak somewhere beside me. 

"Please no!" Her exhale was soft. I couldn't see her, but could see Chaff, across from me, looking at something in horror. 

"No!” He shouted. And his shout broke the stillness in the air. The Capitol crowd below started streaming up onto the platforms, and in an instant, my vision was swarmed by faces, looking down at me like so many grotesque masks. I couldn't keep my eyes fixed on any one of them, and their voices blurred together. 

"....Quarter Quell boy...." 

"... pretty little thing..."

"...took quite a nasty scar in his Games..."

"No!" I tried to tell the leering yellow eyed man just beside me. "No, my escort put that there on account of my scar's real sensitive, see and....." 

The chain snapped, and the hands pulled my vest and shirt open and I gasped as sharp nails and blunt fingers poked and prodded at the delicate skin and the man I had been pleading with laughed and laughed and laughed. The hands on my scar spread like a fungus in the damp, creeping up my chest and down my hips, laughing as I tried to twist out of their grasp. Over their laughs I could hear voices I recognized but I couldn't put together what was being said. Just snatches. 

"...wild little thing. I've never had District Twelve before...."

"....imagine those pretty grey eyes looking up at you while...." 

I felt my belt being taken, my trousers being pushed aside, as hands I couldn't count continued to explore. My shirt had long since been flung open. A sharp pair of nails pinched at the flesh of my nipple and my blood ran cold. 

"Stop!" I shouted. I wasn't sure at who. I just picked a face. A blue lipped older woman. She laughed. A hand slipped under the waist band of my underwear and I cried out again, straining against bonds to curl up on myself, to protect myself. "Stop! Help!" 

"I want him." The blue lipped woman said. "Hand me that syringe." 

Something stabbed into my thigh. A few moments later, I started to feel too warm. My skin was like fire under the hands that trailed down my exposed thighs and raked the sensitive gash of my scar. And, I realized with horror, I was hard. 

I don't think I realized what was happening till it was already happening. Till that woman had climbed on top of me, bore down on me. I was initially more concerned with how much it hurt to have the weight of her on my hips, pulling the skin of my scar so taught I swore it was going to pull open and my insides would spill into the blue lipped woman's lap and then maybe she'd get off me and stop rocking and the pain would stop. But slowly I got used to the agony. Just in time for the realization of what was happening to me to set in and make my blood run cold. I might have screamed. I'm not sure. I wasn't sure I was breathing properly. I know my mouth was doing something cause someone shoved a bit of the silvery fabric torn off my suit into my mouth to silence me. I spat it out and it landed wetly next to my head. The moisture had turned the light silver a soft dove grey....

I hadn't slept with Lenore Dove. We'd never had the privacy, besides wasn't worth risking a pregnancy. Her uncles already hated me enough...and we always figured we'd have ample time once we were married and had a place of our own. And in that moment all I wanted to do was apologize to her, my Lenore Dove. To beg for forgiveness for not being able to get the moaning woman atop me to stop! Stop! 

I was crying. I could hear cries like mine from all over the room. The woman above me started shaking, then got off me, and after another prick in my thigh, a man took his place. The man with the yellow eyes was still beside me. Still laughing. Still touching me.

"Haymitch." I thought for a moment I could hear Lenore Dove calling me. My head snapped that way, but there was only a bright red pair of trousers in my face. 

"Haymitch!" The voice cried out again. "Haymitch!!" 

Trousers moved, and behind him I saw the source of my name. 

Wiress. 

There was someone atop her, just like me, and his hands in her dark hair made it a struggle to keep her eyes on me, but she did. She just looked at me, dark inscrutable eyes locked on mine. She was saying something I struggled to make out through my tears. 

"..... breathe." She repeated like a mantra. "Haymitch! Breathe." 

Her own breaths were stable. Slow. Exaggerated. I tried to copy her. Tried to match her. I breathed with her and she never looked away and neither did I. The man atop me left. Others came. For both of us. We winced in pain, gagged in horror, as we were touched, forced, used, but we kept our eyes on each other. We breathed together. We survived. 

A singular voice cut into my focus, and someone blocked my veiw of Wiress. 

"DRU, BABY! LOOK! IT'S OURS!" 

It took a moment to place the half naked man who blocked my view, but the woman who stepped up to join him was instantly recognizable. Drusilla. And Magno. They were both staring down at me. He like I was a fascinating insect and she like I was a repellant bug. 

"Oh, it is!" She remarked. Some of her blue drink splashed on my face as she looked up at the person on me. "For the life of me I cannot see the appeal of fucking the little mutt but to each their own....."

She wandered off and Magno turned to follow....but stopped, turned back, and took something from a pouch at his wrist. He forced the little tablet into my mouth, and kept it covered with his hand till the round pill dissolved on my tounge. Then he patted my hair, long since escaped from the ribbon Effie'd put it in, and dissapeared into the crowd. 

Whatever he'd given me acted fast. 

Voices blurred together. The screaming ache in my scar and my insides subsided. The parade of cruel faces became little more than a stream of too bright colors as my very thoughts broke apart inside of me, giving way to shattered fragments of impressions. Lights exploding like fireworks. Sound popping like bubbles. 

A thousand brightly colored snakes wanted to strangle me. 

And then they were gone. I could see Wiress's dark eyes. Hear her breaths. It was too quiet. Voices swam around me like water. Some crying. Some talking. 

"....gave him some kind of drug..."

My mother was looking at me, then it was Mags, flowers blooming from her split lip and black eye. 

Sid's nimble fingers were untying me....or was it Lyme? 

"....back to his floor. She can be trusted...." 

I was being carried in my Pa's arms. I was a child again. I was running along holding Burdie's stump, or hand, giggling as we escaped our third grade detention room. Blair was holding me up untill I fell into Lenore Dove's open arms, and we tumbled down together into the soft grass of the meadow. 

"Had a little bit too much fun at the party, Haymitch?" She was frowning down at me, all concerned. Her head kept exploding into a flock of doves. No....not Doves.....parrots. No. Those horrible pink birds with Maysilie's blood dripping from their horrific little beaks. 

I was screaming and trying to push them away from me. 

Then Effie was there, tucking me in bed. 

Then it was morning. And I was being dragged up by Peacekeepers and Effie wasn't there. 

My thoughts didn't come back together till I was on the train home. Not the nice one, no. The old one, where I was locked in a cargo hold with my trunk and two plain wooden coffins, their simple brass labels staring at me with accusation. How dare I sit there and sob? I was alive. They were dead. I couldn't keep them alive. I couldn't bring them home. They'd lost their lives. 

I didn't want to think about what I'd lost.