Haymitch Abernathy has been a tribute since he was fifteen.
The reaping for the second Quarter Quell happened just four days before his birthday. He remembers knowing how many kids were being picked, but he also knew there were almost a thousand kids in the reaping that year. His name was only in there ten times. But it was pulled. His and Maysilee's, Canto and Teeka's. He was shoved on the train, which was extra crowed with attendants, and sat numb the entire ride to the Capitol.
The only District 12 victor in history had won the 3rd Hunger Games. He was dead now, of old age, so Haymitch had no one to guide him through the next terrifying nights. He just tried as hard as he could, paying rapt attention to the trainers, listening in when other tributes talked to their mentors, trying to steal bits and pieces of their advice. No matter how much he prepared, the next three days passed too quickly. Less than a week after his name had been pulled from the reaping ball, he found himself locked in a tube, sliding into the arena too fast.
And Haymitch was scared.
But as he went up into the arena, a dim, almost laughably mundane thought entered his head.
I'm sixteen today.
And as his feet hit the grass, he made a promise to himself.
I am not dying on my sixteenth birthday. And he ran as fast as he could towards the Cornucopia, lungs burning in the cold air.
He was fast. And clever.
Just fast and clever enough to survive.
So from then on, he was Haymitch the tribute.
And he did survive, unlike Maysilee, unlike Canto, who was killed when the mountain exploded, and little Teeka, who got sliced to ribbons by the girl from 1. The same girl Haymitch defeated three days later. That horrifying day when he watched her convulse on the ground with an ax in her head. He just stared at her dying, numb. He hardly heard the trumpets blare, but there they were.
So from then on he was Haymitch the victor.
...
Haymitch Abernathy has been an alcoholic since he was sixteen.
He sat in the Hob, the loss of his mama and Bran and his beautiful Emilia still as fresh to him as the day they'd been executed four weeks before. His fingers clamped and unclenched around the edge of the splintered wooden counter, feeling his heartbeat quicken and his vision start to blur. A panic attack, like so many others he'd been having since Snow took his family. Because Haymitch had been too clever in the games. Because he wouldn't allow himself to be sold into prostitution as punishment.
Haymitch couldn't swallow as hot tears ran down his cheeks for the sixth time in two days. Greasy Sae leaned over the counter and tried to give his arm a comforting pat. He jerked away from her touch. Without missing a beat, she placed a small glass and poured a shot of white whiskey in front of him. He drank that glass in one gulp.
Then he had another.
And another.
And another.
He finished the entire bottle and passed out at the bar. When he came to, he only wanted more. Anything to dull his horrible pain.
So he drank another bottle.
He never stopped.
So from then on, he was Haymitch The alcoholic.
...
Haymitch has been a mentor since he was seventeen.
He remembers the first tributes he got. They were both merchant kids. A fourteen year old girl named Dafnee and a boy called Lawrence. Lawrence was eighteen, older than Haymitch himself. Any advice Haymitch gave to him on the train to the Capitol was scoffed at, or eyes rolled until Haymitch felt like a stupid little kid. Dafnee was a more attentive listener, but she was so small and weak. Even holding a thick piece of bread at dinner that first night looked like it was straining her.
Still, Haymitch tried that first year, he did. He even stopped drinking so much, although returning to the Capitol sent him into such a panic all he wanted to do was black out.
But he pushed on, giving Lawerence and Dafnee all the tips he could cram in their heads in the three days he had them. The morning the 51st Hunger Games started was a Saturday. Haymitch, clutching a coffee mug full of gin, sat in his hotel room, staring at the screen as the clock counted down from sixty. He was absolutely powerless, biting his nails, hoping against hope he had done enough.
Dafnee was killed within the first ten minutes. Lawerence died two days in from decapitation. Haymitch drank so much that weekend he had to be hospitalized. He faded in and out of consciousness for days, only one thought in his dizzy, fuzzy head.
I can't save anyone...Not even me.
From then on, he was Haymitch, the Tribute-turned-victor-turned-drunk-and-failed-mentor.
...
But Haymitch Abernathy, he was gone.
The toddler who chased his dog around his home on the Seam.
The little boy who went to his first day of school in a shirt borrowed from his older cousin, nervous and apprehensive.
The ten year old who grieved as his father perished in the worst mining disaster in District 12 history. Who laid flowers on his grave every week for six years.
The tween who liked to help his mother sew blankets to sell at the Hob every month.
The handsome teenager who had girls and boys falling all over him, who fell for a beautiful girl with eyes gray and brilliant like his own. Who even danced around a little, after his first kiss.
The boy who had a whole life ahead of him.
No one remembers that boy.
They tried to kill him, sure.
But it was Haymitch who succeeded.