Hi! This is my first fanfic :) It's a Haymitch centered drabble, not very long but it still took time for me to write it, so please be kind! I welcome critics as long as they're not flames.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games. If I did, I would be super-awesome Suzanne Collins, which I clearly aren't.
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I remember the first time I drank vodka. It was shortly after returning from the Hunger Games, I was only sixteen years old. I had won, but what a price had I paid to stay alive. Dead corpses haunted my sleep, and of course Maysilee's thought made me shatter to pieces. Whenever she came to my mind – which was rather often to say the truth – I felt my knees wobbling and a lump in my throat impossible to gulp back into my stomach. I had never tasted alcohol before, really. Seam children like me didn't even have food, how would they ever have alcohol? Perhaps it was just that what attracted me to drinking, the unknown pleasure of feeling the fiery liquid burning the edges of my tongue, and then rushing towards my stomach. For a split of a second, the pain of vodka inside my throat made me forget about all I had suffered in the Hunger Games, allowing me to rest in peace for a couple of hours. I was drowsy, and couldn't stand to my feet, but at least Maysilee and the other tributes left my mind for a while.
And here I am. I am thirty-nine years old now, and I look old and pale, like someone whose life has been a whole mess. Hasn't mine been a series of accidents, bad things that have lead me to the lifestyle I'm carrying now?
The tributes must be waiting for the countdown in the Cornucopia right now. Little Petty, who has always been chirpy and cheery, must be trembling in the spot right now. The poor girl, she's only twelve years old. I know she won't survive, but yet Effie has insisted on training her to the limit. The poor thing looked exhausted after our training sessions, and I often heard her crying during nighttime. Perhaps even she knows she doesn't hold a chance here. She's the daughter of District 12's librarian. A librarian's child doesn't fit in the Hunger Games. Verses and comics will not save little Petty from dying, and I guess it will be soon. Perhaps even in the Bloodbath.
I'm worried about Asher anyway. He's a good tribute. Strong, well-built, the butcher's son – he could be a good rival to the careers. But I haven't trained him right. I've just sunk into my drinking and I've left Asher and Petty to their own fate, and now they're going to die. I just know it. I guess I should be used to it after twenty-three years mentoring a pair of tributes that never returned to their homes in District 12. Forty-six teenagers sent to their deaths, all my fault. All my fault.
I gulp down my vodka glass and throw it angrily at the expensive Capitol wall. Expensive? Well, fuck their money! Fuck everything, fuck the bloody Hunger Games, fuck the alcohol that has made me waste my whole life, and fuck that day in which I was reaped! I press my head onto my fists and I let out a loud, angry howl.
Asher and Petty will die, just like the other forty-four tributes I have mentored over the last years.
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I know, pretty short, but I said it was a drabble! Hope you enjoyed it :) Please R&R and please feel free to let me know any corrections/suggestions you may have for this!
Juliet :)