Final Farewell

a Hunger Games story

by Technomad

12th year, New Era (post-Revolution)

Peeta Mellark was just taking one of his special confections out of the oven, preparatory to letting it cool and frosting it, when Katniss came in. He heard her enter the front door of their house in what had been Victors' Village, and from the way she walked back to the kitchen, he knew that the news wasn't good.

"How is he?" Peeta asked when Katniss came in. "Did the doctors find something for the pain?"

Katniss shook her head, her face blank. "No. There was nothing they could do. But he's not in pain any more."

She didn't say anything more, but she didn't need to. Peeta knew immediately, and his eyes welled with tears. "It's probably for the best. He hadn't been happy since he was Reaped." He took Katniss in his arms, and in his embrace, she finally let herself go. Both of them wept unashamedly.

"We owe him. Owe him more than we could ever pay," Katniss finally sniffled. "I'd have gone to bed with him in a second if he'd ever asked me to. I'd have done more than that, if he'd ever asked me to."

"But he'd never ask that of you," Peeta said, his breath warm in Katniss' hair. "He knew that you love me. If he was ever happy, he was happy when he saw us finally get together."

Katniss looked up, into her husband's eyes. "Real, or not real?"

Peeta seemed to stare into the distance, at something only he could see. It was a look many Victors had. Then he looked at his wife. "Real."

They gradually let go of each other. Katniss wiped at her eyes. "We're the closest thing he has to next-of-kin. We'll have to make the arrangements."

Peeta nodded, and picked up the telephone. Since the victory, all the former Districts and Capitol were in communication with each other, but Peeta and Katniss rarely made or received calls.

All of the Districts were represented at the funeral. Many of them were represented by their surviving Victors, and Thirteen, which had no Victors, had sent some bigwigs whose names Peeta and Katniss had forgotten as soon as they turned away. Johanna Mason hugged both Peeta and Katniss, and murmured about how sorry she was. Annie Cresta proudly showed off her little boy, and both Peeta and Katniss made approving noises. Katniss' mother showed up, a rare thing, and in view of why they were there, refrained from asking when she would become a grandmother. Katniss was grateful for her mother's restraint.

The Capitol was represented, too. Effie Trinket was there, looking much better than anybody her age had any right to, her eyes red with weeping and her face free of makeup. She still wore a wig, but on this occasion, she had chosen a simple one that Peeta thought looked very good on her, instead of some elaborate concoction that belonged on something from another planet. She leaned heavily on Caesar Flickerman's arm; the former announcer and emcee had visibly aged, and looked as though he didn't sleep well at night. Not far away Octavia, Flavius and Venia huddled together, like scared small animals. This trip was only the second time in their lives they'd ever left the Capitol, and the first time hadn't made them want a repetition. Atala was also there, still looking fit and healthy.

Peeta and Katniss and their neighbors made very sure that the Capitol representatives felt welcomed and wanted. They forced themselves out of their own grief to greet them warmly, and introduced them to people they hadn't met, mostly non-Victor representatives from the former Districts. After a while, they relaxed slightly, but Peeta could see that they were still edgy.

After a while, they moved on in to the reception room. At one end of the room was an open coffin, in which Haymitch Abernathy lay. Peeta gasped slightly at the sight. The undertaker was from the Capitol, and he had done a magnificent job. Haymitch looked better than he had in years; the telltale puffiness of his face was gone, and Peeta could see clear traces of the darkly handsome young Seam boy who'd been Reaped so long ago.

Bouquets of flowers were around the coffin. Most of them were from the former District 12, and were dominated by the wild mountain flowers that grew everywhere. Others were from other former Districts, many of them with plants and flowers that Peeta had never seen. And some were from the Capitol, with flowers that Peeta knew had not been created by Nature. The overall effect was like a beautiful garden.

By local custom, the next-of-kin always spoke first at funerals. Katniss got up and went to the front of the room once everybody had been seated and quiet had descended. She stood behind the podium that had been used at her father's and sister's services, and surveyed the crowd. Peeta thought that it was so quiet that he could have heard a pin drop.

"At first, I despised him," Katniss finally began. "I was just sixteen, and the only thing between me and death was this man…and he seemed far more interested in his white liquor than he was in my fate. We snapped and snarled at each other without mercy." She paused and caught her breath, suppressing a sob by main force. "Later on, I got to know the man behind the mask. The man who'd won the Quarter Quell when nobody expected him to, the man who came home to find his family dead as punishment for the trick he'd pulled. The man who'd been forced to witness, year after year after endless year, other children being Reaped and coming home in coffins." Self-control failed, and she sobbed for a second. "I don't blame him for taking to drink! If I had my time to do over again, I'd hand him the damn white liquor with my own two hands! For twenty-four years, he lived in a hell on earth!"

After a minute, she got control of herself. "When he saw me volunteering to take my little sister's place, I think he felt hope for the first time in a long time. He snarked and snarled, and he drank…by that time, I think being weaned off the white liquor could have killed him if it were done wrong…but he did all he could to keep me, and Peeta, alive. And I found out that he'd been part of a group working behind the scenes to bring the whole rotten system down, and I was so ashamed of myself that I couldn't bear it!"

She paused for breath. "After the victory, he came back here to live. I think it was partly to keep an eye on me, and Peeta. We were going through rough times of our own, and once a mentor, always a mentor. When we started putting together a memorial book, he helped out, no matter how painful it must have been for him. He told us about the other Tributes he'd mentored, and didn't spare himself one bit of the blame for their deaths. Even when he almost certainly couldn't have done anything." She sniffled. "At least, where ever he now is, we can hope that it's peaceful, and quiet…and that there are no Hunger Games!"

When she sat down, Peeta stood up. "Haymitch told me once that while Katniss had had more occasion to use her brains, he thought that I had more raw brainpower." Katniss gave her husband a startled glance. "He said that he was really impressed with the way I played the audience, both times I was on Caesar Flickerman's show before the Games."

People turned to look at Flickerman, who nodded and gave them a brief, flashing grin much like the beaming smile that had once been his trademark.

Peeta went on: "He cared. He could have been like some mentors, who shrug off their Tributes' deaths, but he felt each one personally, and the pain was just too much for one person to handle. They said that the cumulative effects of the drink killed him, but I think that for all practical purposes, Haymitch Abernathy died in the arena of the fiftieth Hunger Games, even though his body survived. What we had instead was a sad ghost. And now that ghost is at rest." Peeta sat down, and Katniss latched on to him, her tears staining the shoulder of his coat as he put his arm around her to try to comfort her.

Once the next-of-kin had spoken, it was customary for others to speak if they chose to. Before anybody else could, Johanna Mason stood and went to the front of the room. Her eyes held a challenge for anybody who dared to question her right to speak.

"In some ways, Haymitch and I had a lot in common, for all that I'm so much younger and from a different District," she began. "Both of us had our families killed by the Capitol. In his case, it was because they thought he had made them look like fools. In my case, it was because I refused to roll over and play pony on command for them." The Capitol people in the room looked very sheepish, as the others turned to give them a look.

"As I say, we had a bond. We were snarking buddies for years, seeing who could one-up whom in sarcastic comments. I could see that he was trying to commit suicide by alcohol, and I tried all I could to make him see that there was still point in living." She looked at Katniss, then Peeta. "That first time we really met, in the elevator? That little act wasn't aimed at either of you, and if I embarrassed you, I'm honestly sorry. That was aimed at Haymitch. I'd been trying to drag him off to bed for years." Katniss' eyes went wide, and Peeta's face went red, as they both remembered Johanna casually stripping off. "He was my friend, and he was hurting inside like a bag of broken glass. I thought that if I could ensnare him in my sexual web it might make him feel better." She shrugged. "My first year as a mentor, he stopped me from committing suicide when my Tributes were killed, and told me that he understood my feelings. And he did. Anything I could have done to ease his suffering, I'd have done, and been glad to do it!"

Johanna sat down. As she passed by Katniss, Katniss reached out and took her hand, squeezing it tightly in thanks. The two women shared a look for a second, a look of mutual understanding.

Other Victors came up to the podium, one by one, offering reminisces of the years when they had known Haymitch. Caesar Flickerman spoke briefly, saying how very impressed he'd been with Haymitch in their pre-Game interview. Effie Trinket tried to follow, but burst into tears and had to be helped back to her seat by Caesar.

Finally, nobody else wanted to speak. Katniss and Peeta stood up, and so did the people they'd asked to help with this last task. Johanna Mason, Beetee, and two other Victors stood, and they went forward, as Peeta gently closed and latched the coffin. They picked it up by its handles and carried it out, as the rest of the mourners followed.

One of the Victors had used his time in the Capitol to research, and had found out about some old funeral customs from before the foundation of Panem. As the procession headed out, a drum began to roll. It rolled for a while, then stopped, then gave one quick tap. Roll, tap. Roll, tap-tap-tap. Roll, tap. He had said that this was a special drum signal, called "The Warrior Home."

The grave had been dug the day before, in the section of the old District 12 cemetery reserved for Hunger Games tributes, and was waiting for its occupant. The pallbearers attached ropes to the coffin's handles, and gently lowered their friend into his long home. Once the coffin was at the bottom of the grave, every Victor present took turns shoveling dirt on top of it. "Only a Victor throws dirt on a Victor," Peeta had said, when he'd explained to people how things were to be. Nobody had felt like arguing with him.

The stone marking the grave had been carved in the Capitol. It bore the inscription:

Haymitch Abernathy

Victor, 50th Hunger Games

Mentor

Free of the Games at last.

At a discreet signal from Peeta, a local fiddler struck up a traditional tune. To the notes of the Ashokan Farewell, the people who had known and loved Haymitch Abernathy said their last sad goodbyes.

THE END