1.
"Huh? What?" Haymitch peered at the boy in disbelief, tired belief, and not a small amount of awkward disgust; "Run that one by me again."
"I'm in love with her," he repeated – "She's – indescribable – and I could never be good enough for her. I certainly couldn't kill her."
"Oh Christ," Haymitch groaned, sinking further into the soft leather of the couch that was feeling increasingly soft and somehow dizzying the further the train progressed towards the Capitol.
"She's everything to me-" Peeta was still talking, though Haymitch had long since face-palmed heavily and kept the hand over his face in weariness. He tried not to listen, tried not to relate to the boy's babbling on and on about how wonderful she was, how much better than him she was, how she was in another league from him; another world even, he could never begin to compare or even comprehend.
"Oh god, please stop." It came out of Haymitch's mouth before he could stop it and he knew what the boy would do next before he did it. He did stop talking, almost immediately, he looked down sadly, not even as angry as he probably ought to be, and just said sadly to the floor –
"I guess you wouldn't understand."
"No" he lied, drawling through his teeth – "I guess I really wouldn't."
Kid, he though heavily, you have no idea.
By damn you have no idea.
_x_
"Manners Cost Nothing," her mother told her – "Don't be too clever, nobody wants to hear your opinions, it's your duty to us all just to be pretty, smile and be nice, smile for the cameras, smile, smile, smile!"
The rounds of instruction were endless and repetitive and they never seemed to make any sense. One day she overheard her mother say despairingly – "I wish she'd just been born a fool. A pretty little fool, the best thing a girl can be in this world."
At twelve years old she peered into the mirror, scrunching up her face, trying to see where the fault could lie.
"I think I'm kinda pretty," she said uncertainly – "I think my hair looks nice."
"Effie, don't be ridiculous" her mother would sigh, sweeping in on a wave of rustling frills and glittering superiority – "Try this new colour- and that make up I got you last week."
She looked back in the mirror when her mother was done and gone, and cried when she did not recognise herself. Mascara ran down her cheeks, turning her vision ugly.
-x-
"There must be more than this," she said a year later, and her mother's exasperation knew no bounds;
"What more could you want?"
Effie stared peevishly out across the city and could not find the words to explain it. Something about cages. Her insides balled up in frustration.
"The Capitol is everything," her mother pressed on – "Everything you need concern yourself with."
-x-
"Take a child with me, are you mad?" she overheard her parents arguing that night – "To District twelve? For the quarter quell? – do you hear yourself?"
"She's your child. And yes, how else is she going to stop talking about how great the rest of the world must be unless you show her otherwise?"
"She's not ready."
She heard her father laugh nastily;
"Tell that to the kids in the games."
The familiar chink of decanter against glass, her father shifting in his leather chair, her mother's voice rising high to start screeching.
-x-
And in the end –
"Pack your bags," her mother said. "This year I'm taking you to Twelve."
Effie leaped and whooped for excitement until she was shouted at.
"Thank you!" she breathed. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"
"Thank your father, not me – in fact, don't thank me at all."
Effie, looking quizzical, with the slight frown she was not supposed to make, wondered if her mother was ever so slightly drunk.
-x-
The whole train journey, she never took her eyes from the window as the world beyond the city unfolded, falling out like the pleats in an elaborate new skirt. Folds and seams of land tumbled before her awestruck eyes and she could not sit still for joy at how big the world was turning out to be. She could have spread out her arms and flown across it. This was better than skyscrapers and even sequins. Better than the yearly thrill of watching the Hunger Games on TV. This was the most immense thing she had ever seen and it was brilliant, wonderful and terrifying all at once.
When the train pulled into District Twelve she stared in increasing horror at the people she saw beyond the window.
"Mother, what's wrong with them?"
"Ignore them dear, they're – they're not people the same way we are."
Effie could not really see – beyond the awful clothes and the skinniness – that there was any real difference in people themselves but she was learning not to say such things that were probably wrong of her so instead she said, pouting,
"I don't like it."
"Then stay on the train."
She supposed she was a coward, but the people looked back at them with such hostility, one man, his face black with coal dust, actually spitting on the platform beside their carriage, that she nodded and shrank down into her seat when her mother left the train. It made no sense, any of it, the look of these people's eyes and the way they did not seem as pleased to see them as her mother had told her. Told her they welcomed the sight of Capitol people in their dull little lives; that they would be in awe of them. Effie could not help but think that it did not look like awe.
-x-
She supposed she must have fallen asleep, and for a while, because she woke up and it was dark. The train was moving again, slower now and back, she could only guess, towards the Capitol. She had been told the return journey would take a few days so the tributes could be prepared on the way. The Tributes! It gave her a thrill of excitement; there were twice as many this year, for the Quarter Quell, and she so wanted to see them.
She supposed her mother had just forgotten she existed again, and so she made her way intently down the warm, dimly lit train towards the dining car and in one of the sleeping cars she was arrested by the sound of someone crying. She had never heard another person cry before – smile, she was always told – they all were told – smile even if you cannot bear it, smile if your heart is breaking.
The door was open just a crack. None of them locked properly – just in case – her mother said, but she would not say in case of what. She nudged it open with her toe and stared at the boy, fascinated. He did not see her at first, back to the door and head down, sat on a chair that looked far too delicate for him. She frowned minutely and cocked her head to one side like a bird –
"Why are you crying?" she asked, and her voice sounded shrill in her ears. The boy twisted round, startled, angrily brushing at his face with a sleeve.
"Not crying," he grunted, though there were clear tracks of clean cutting through his face – "Go away."
She wrinkled her nose and ignored this.
"You smell bad," she pronounced – "And you look terrible."
"Well shit, now all my other problems seem so small and pesky."
"I don't –" she began, appalled and delighted to have heard such language aloud for the first time – "I cannot believe you just spoke to me like that."
The boy gave a grunt that, under any other circumstances, might have been a laugh;
"Get used to it, princess."
"You're so rude!" she squeaked – "Why?"
"Well I suppose you'd be a little testy too, if you'd just been selected for a messy televised death."
"You're – you're a Tribute?" Her eyes went wide, she could not help but pronounce the word with something rather like reverence.
"Christ. Fuck off."
"I've never met a Tribute before."
"And you won't meet me again either. Congrats."
"You – you could win."
"Yeah. Right. Jesus, stop smiling like that, you're killing me."
She supposed she had been smiling; she had rather hoped it had been winningly, the way she saw her mother flirt and flounce when talking to boys.
"I never talked to a boy before," she admitted out loud, following her own train of thought.
"That's nice for them." He stood up, ignoring her a little too carefully for it to quite wash, as he flopped over to the bed where he lay, hands under his head looking up at the ceiling.
"Don't you like me?"
"No. Why are you still here?"
She sighed a little and supposed this meant her first attempt to make a friend must have failed. She wondered what she had done wrong, but did not want to ask.
"I'll go then."
The boy watched her without her seeing it, saw her shoulders sink a little, heard the hurt creep into her voice that was not an act, found, in spite of himself and everything else that he cared just a little.
"Wait," he swung round to sit on the edge of the bed. She turned back so quickly it was pitiful. He shook his head.
"What's your name, sweetheart?"
"Euphemia," she said, hopeful again in an instant – "Euphemia Coriole Orestes."
"That's – that's disgusting."
"It's Effie for short."
"That's a little better. Listen Effie, don't listen to any of it, alright? Everything they tell you in the Capitol's a lie. Don't fall for it – and don't trust any of them, okay?"
"I don't understand. Can I trust you?"
"I'll be dead this time next week. Does it matter?"
"Don't say that!"
He shrugged again;
"Well. Don't trouble your pretty little head about it."
"You –" she simpered a little, though it was a genuine enough question – "You think I'm pretty?" she tossed her hair a little, brushed out her skirt unnecessarily. He rolled his eyes.
"Spare me. I have a girlfriend."
She could never have quite explained her disappointment.
"I –" she started, awkwardly – "I wish you weren't –" it occurred to her suddenly that she could not really say "Going to die" – "In the Hunger Games" she finished, lamely.
"Yeah. You and me both, princess."
She remembered the phrase she had been looking for; it suddenly seemed like the perfect thing to say –
"May the – odds be ever in your favour!" she chirped, though it came out a little like a question.
"Christ," he groaned, shaking his head – "I mean it now – fuck off."
She flashed a final dazzling smile and a butterfly wave as she sashayed out the door.
_x_
This my first attempt at Hayffie, do let me know how it's going! It will absolutely get explicit in later chapter, just so you're warned/ prepared! :-)