The Taking
a/n: my mind went off into an au/plausible world. forgive any non-canon issues. it was a theory, anyway, haha. ugh, this one isn't as great as my last two. warning: several f-bombs. don't like, don't read. enjoy anyways y'all~
"You, Mr. Abernathy, have the strangest humor," Effie whispers to me, taking a seat next to me as we settle in a couch in the viewing room. The room isn't much to begin with — something bigger than a supply closet, just enough to fit a TV, a couch, phones for the escort and mentor to speak to Control and sponsors, and the aforementioned escort and mentor. In essence, we dictate the lives of the tributes, and whether or not they survive, from the comfort of our own little room. The kids are on their own, doing God knows what. Effie and I had mutually decided that the kids could take care of themselves.
Which, in retrospect, is a lot of pressure on us. On a definite, likely basis, Effie and I never really have had much ado about these type of things, because there was only one time that we had to deal with this type of situation, where our tributes lasted long enough to see the final battle. And obviously, survived.
But this year would be different. The rebellion is upon us, and Effie has no idea. We've kept her in the dark for the most part - of course we had told her some things, little hints she's more or less never really picked up on. But we left her otherwise blissfully unaware of the rebellion. She has no place in it, anyway. What would she bring to the table? Fashion advice?
I look over my shoulder, now. She smiles at me. After ten years of working with this woman, I can finally say that we actually get alone. About time that woman got knocked some sense into her! She actually kind of gets me. I don't know what clicked in her mind, but it did.
She clicks her glass of wine with mine, and smirks playfully. This year, she's gone a bit more natural regarding her makeup, revealing a much younger, prettier face instead of a sickly, pasty version of her beauty. I never knew why she'd put makeup on, anyway. Much more gorgeous without the crap on her face.
"You know it, sweetheart," I say, sipping my glass. She stares at me for a while, suppressing a small grin before she turns away, shaking her head. "What?" I ask. When she giggles, I sigh loudly because I know what she's trying to do.
"Nothing..." she says, fingering the pillow tassels. She rolls her eyes, slapping the pillow, and says, "It just bloody amuses me at how stupid you mentors think I am."
"Well, no offense, but..." I start to say, but she cuts me off before I could finish.
"But I'm not, you arrogant ass!"she snaps suddenly, and her face contorts into a twisted look of fury and malice — one thing, definitely, I knew that women were devils when they were mad. Maybe Effie in torment is worse tenfold.
"Okay..." I say slowly, sinking in to the couch. I turn my head to face her, and her eyes turn upward and I know I said the wrong thing. "Look, I don't want to fight. Just tell me what you want me to think because we gotta see the kids off before they go in the launch room."
"But it's not simple that way! Haymitch..." she trails off, slouching into the couch in the same, lazing manner as I had. "I know you mentors, you district people are planning something. And frankly, I...don't know what. But I'm just saying, I'm on your side."
"On our side, psh," I laugh. I used to believe that, but it was clear where her loyalties lie. I laugh again in spite of her. This pretty little escort walks in and tells me that she's on our side, and in reality, she's just the opposite.
"How could you be on our side? You Capitol people have nothing to lose...you don't lose, you gain, that's what you do," I say bitterly. "You're not on our side, Effie. That's completely delusional."
She scoffs, her fingers curling into the arm of the sofa. Her nails leave scars on the fabric, the imprints of half-moons still there even after she's lets go. That scares me in ways that I'll never fully understand—it was a different kind of fear, not like fear for my life, but fear of a woman's wrath. Much scarier in a way, than a threat of death. I shake my head - come on, Haymitch, why are you scared of a little woman?
"I guess that's what it boils down to, then, the district and Capitol people's differences. I've done my fair share of harsh judgements on you and all the others, but God..." she says, "It's not like — not like we don't have anything to lose either."
"Oh sure, okay. So, the inability to acquire the latest season's Gucci floral prints is 'something' to lose, am I right?" I say this because from what little I know, this is true. They freak out about fashion, not starvation; they have it made, and we don't.
"You don't get it, Haymitch," Effie says quietly. I mistake her softness for defeat. I shake my head.
"It's you who doesn't get it. You — you don't know anything about the districts. You don't know pain, hunger, fear...all you know are material, replaceable things." I wasn't the least bit aware of the volume of my words, how each stinging syllable boomed, how Effie flinched with each one. "You took my life! You killed my family! You killed my girl! How dare you say you're with us when you're the one antagonizing us! Bull fucking shit!"
I'm standing over her, shaking still, veins bulging and eyes wide with momentary madness. She looks beyond me, through me, hands folding in her lap again and again and a tear sliding down her cheek. I grab her by the collar, but I hadn't mean to. I look into her green eyes, my grip tightening on the fistful of her shirt. She refuses to return the glare. She whimpers, and she cries, but she doesn't dare to look at me.
The breaking of the silence came in waves, with my breath hitching and unhitching with uneven gasps. I whisper to her, in a frayed voice, hoping that she could hear my last, final statement on the matter, "Look me in the eye. Tell me what you see, tell me that you're like me. Tell me you're with the Resistance." I shake her roughly, making her eyes meet mine. I don't care that all I see is fear buried beneath verdigris, I don't care if she's whimpering because I'm hurting her. I don't think she realizes how awful she's making me be. "Look at me." I push her into the wall. "Say you're like me."
Effie's lower lip quivers, and she puts a hand on my chest and softly — but yet forcibly — pushes me away. She steps back, trembling from the altercation, and the tears roll down faster, more frequently. She stays there, back against the wall. "No," she says simply.
"Penny for your thoughts," I shout, "Tell me what the fuck is going on in your mind. Tell me exactly what you expect me to fucking think from a stupid, self-serving bitch like you?" I don't feel the tiniest bit of guilt in my words. I know I should, but I don't. They say anger makes you either say the truth or things you don't mean. Is it possible that the boundaries that separate the truth and intention are overlapping?
"You don't know half the things the government does to it's own people," she says, looking down. "The things that were said, done to me after last year's games...the attention was plentiful, wonderful...but..." She lifts her eyes and I see a vulnerability in her. "One can only take so much delusional grandeur, Haymitch. You of all people should know that."
"That's not the same..." I say, looking away.
"Haymitch—"
"That's not the fucking same!" I scream, and I scare myself. My eyes fly straight to hers, and for a second, I see my own emotions reflected in hers. Confusion and misguided anger, that was all I saw now. Not fear, but fury. That only makes me angrier. "I'd take that over dehydration and exposure and famine any day! DAMN IT EFFIE, you don't get it!" She whimpers, quietly, but I pretend to not hear it. "Just because — just because...some stupid men from the Capitol were, I don't know — flirting with you? Making advances? Groping you? What is it that's so bad, Effie, so bad that it tops the fucking Hunger Games itself! HUH?"
"The things that were done—" she starts to yell, her hand slapping her palm with each word. Effie looks at me in the eye. I look away from her — she's still lost. She doesn't get it. "The things..." she trails off, her words hoarse and vacant.
"What things?" I shout back.
"—for the good of government, to stimulate the loss of economy — you districts were rebelling, not...not supplying the Capitol with enough, and they were losing money - while we were...sold." She stops. Looks away. She growls softly, "The black market and the sex trade never have been so alive, HASN'T IT, HAYMITCH? Do you know HOW?" She narrows her eyes, her fingers quaking at her side as she walks forward feebly. Her voice is more than loud, more than enough power — call me prejudiced, but I never expected her to raise her voice considering her background. For a moment I track back to the times over dinner where she'd share childhood anecdotes. What happened to our antebellum?
Effie stops and drops her gaze, continuing softly, "A select few, the ones who no one really knew — the nameless ones lost it all. They disappeared and were sold, killed." She swallows the sobs that were threatening to burst her open, and I stand by, appalled, almost in disbelief. Her crescendo rises again, as she finishes, "Sold. To other nations, to districts, to anywhere and anyone who'd pay the most. Stripped of clothes and organs and things could be used for money! Sex or kidneys, anything goes! Anything for the fucking highest bidder!"
I blink. No, she must be lying, I thought, because that couldn't be possible. We thought that Panem was thriving on our products, but...if the government is cruel enough to pit twenty-four kids to death annually, there are no limits to their violence and ruthlessness.
"You're lying," I say, stepping closer to her. She backs into the wall, looking at me in not fear, but with eyes clouded with adrenaline. I lean closer to her, my heart pounding in my ears, and I bang the wall above her head as I say, my voice rough, "Why didn't you say anything?"
"You expect me to believe that you'd listen?" she says, laughing in spite of her tears, "You were always drunk — I was too busy lugging you off to your suite to tell you this." Effie turns her head away from me, sobbing, "You needed to know now...you need to start something with the information you have now."
"How would you know? Is this secure information?" I ask, tipping up her chin. She flinches, and it's only now that I realize what I've done. "Effie?"
She covers her mouth to muffle the sobs racking through her whole body, "Oh...my God..."
"They didn't...not to you..." I say, unsure how to react.
"They tried...but the Quell, that saved my life. They can'tt touch me, I'm too famous now... They did it to victors too, the good-looking ones you know. Enobaria, Finnick. What's a one-night fuck with a victor worth? A couple thousand dollars? But..." she says. She shakes her head left-to-right vigorously, sliding to the floor as she sobbed, "My brother..., oh God, oh God...th-they took him, last..." And then, mid-sentence, she hiccups a quick, "Y-you weren't supposed to kn-know. No one was. They're g-going to be coming... for me, I..."
And damned by the bell, knocks and screams of the Peacekeepers outside our door become very real, very true. They were coming for her, and I had nothing to do to fix the mess I made.
The moment I pulled her up and slanted my lips against hers for a goodbye kiss, I knew, and she knew, that the rebellion was starting, and it was spiraling out of my — or anybody's —control.
The distraught escort in my arms reacted accordingly, and kissed me back with an undying fierceness to live, in belief that I was the last person she was going to ever see again. Leaning back, her flush bright against her pale skin, she smiles sadly. She takes both of my hands in her own, and sobbing, she says, "S-stay alive. Haymitch, stay alive." Her words are messy, stumbling upon each other as her less eloquent, more or less Capitol accent came out. Nothing like how she usually talks — foreign, even.
The peacekeepers came barging in, wrestling her out of the room. Not one of them looked at me. All they wanted was her. It scares me to think of the things they could do to her, and just how powerful they were over those who were weak or those with belief in their deaths.
"No!" Effie sobs, as one of them whisks her by the waist, dragging her away. "No! Please, H-Haymitch!" Desperately, she tries to pull away. For a second, I believe her to be successful, and she stumbles out of his arms and collapses into the floor.
"Come on, babe, let's get it going, Jesus Christ," a Peackeeper says, while another mutters a "Holy shit, talk about a whiner..."
"Effie!" I scream, but they lug her off the floor anyway, struggling to get away with her flimsy weight pushing with all her might.
I look away, crying out. One of them tells the other to shut her up and inject her with some of the "peace" and I listen helplessly as her screams die down into unconscious silence.
Unbearable, that's what I could describe the look on her face. Unbearably sad. Could someone be too beautiful, too soft to be treated like this? I step forward to try and get her back, and a Peacekeeper grabs my arm, "Hey buddy, get back."
I punch him out. If you cut off a head on a hydra, two will take its place, and that's exactly what happened. I was lacking prowess, and they had mine by the neck. I was restrained. Couldn't do much about that.
Surely, Effie wasn't the only one subject to their grasp today. Cinna, Portia, and all the others. When I watch them take her away, there were other escorts, prep teams, other Capitol people being shot or whisked away. I fear that they will never come back. But I stay true to my advice passed through the lips of a woman I grew to care for, and mark my words, Effie Trinket will come out of the war alive.