A/N: It's been awhile since I last posted something here, but I figured I'd go ahead and post this. This is also up on AO3 as well. Please note that there are descriptions of and allusions to torture. The rating is meant to reflect that.
I.
Effie thinks, hopes, prays, that this year will be different. She's tired, tired of everything, of seeing the look on Haymitch's face when he sees her, contempt and loathing setting her cheeks ablaze. She's ashamed, really, of it all. They've sent more children to their deaths than she wants to remember. But the number is emblazoned in her memory, like a register, ticking up always, always going up. Eighteen children from District Twelve have died in her time as escort.
Effie Trinket hopes that perhaps this one will be different. It isn't.
It's the 73rd Hunger Games and both of her tributes are sent home in coffins. It starts with too much to drink, as things that shouldn't happen are wont to do, and suddenly, Haymitch is there, pressing her back into the bench and she's sure if she craned her neck to look out the window of the train, she'd be sick, so she doesn't.
Their lips meet in a hurried frenzy, fingers fumbling and teeth clashing and this is not love.
This is lust, base desire, base something, anything to forget the way the bodies had rotted in the desert sun for five days before someone finally won. Survived. Effie's learning that they're not the same after all.
Haymitch tastes like whiskey and cheap toothpaste and my god, Effie needs him, all of him and so much more. She needs the pain to stop. It never does, not really, not ever. Instead it dulls, and she puts it where it can't hurt her, only bringing it out in the dark, inky black of night in the Capitol. But here, now, it's as good as she'll ever get and Effie suddenly understands why Haymitch prefers to drink. Clothes are abandoned on the floor, and maybe she'll be embarrassed by the memories of her wanton moans keeping time with the thrum of the train in the morning, but she likes to think that Haymitch won't remember.
II.
The next time they see each other, a girl volunteers. It's unexpected. And unprecedented. Effie feels sick.
Haymitch drinks himself to sleep with Effie curled into his side, the cold settling into a place so deep she can't wedge it out, and despite the sticky heat of sex still in the air, she shivers.
Katniss and Peeta survive, and Effie sobs. For Rue, Thresh, for the twenty others of District Twelve she couldn't save. Haymitch finds her, and he holds her as she shudders, broken words barely making sense.
"I couldn't save them. Any of them."
Haymitch breathes in deeply, and Effie is comforted by the way his warm breath skirts across her cheek as he whispers, "Maybe it's time we try."
III.
Effie knows the plan. Plutarch has informed her, and Haymitch understands his place in it, but when the arena blows up, Effie doesn't see it coming. There's a backlash, instant and seemingly unexpected, and the Capitol is in shock because they have not seen the other districts the way Effie has, the tenuous line between poverty and starvation, between working to live and living to work, and the Peacekeepers come for her.
She spends two months in the cells before they rescue her. This was not the plan. None of it was- not the starving or the torture or the questioning. Then there were the beatings. They came at random, really. One moment, Effie was wrenched awake by the interrogators, the next, she would be subjected to whatever pointless torture was on the menu.
Most days she wishes she were dead.
Some nights, when she dreams of twisted shackles and cold metal bars that cinch tightly around her wrists, she dreams of a blond man who tastes like alcohol and wonders if he'll come for her.
He doesn't.
So she waits and screams and breaks all over again, until her captors are tired and their chests are heaving with the effort of shattering her every nerve.
Effie wonders if the blond man will mind her scars. She sleeps then, dragged into a dreamless abyss she cannot escape.
IV.
She awakens to bright lights, and they're so harsh, she can feel her heart beating her temples. Making to twist away, she moves, and hisses in pain.
"Effie?" She knows that voice, she knows it, knows it, knows it, can't place it. "I dimmed the lights. You can open your eyes now."
Effie does, and she sucks in a rattling breath when she sees him. The blond man from her dreams. What is his name?
Haymitch. HaymitchHaymitchHaymitchHaymitch.
He is unkempt, and there's purple bruising of exhaustion beneath his eyes, but a look of relief is on his face. He is there. She tries to speak, and the words are caught in her swollen throat. "Hush, don't speak. The doctors say it'll be a while before you can talk."
Haymitch looks down, moving something, and a slight tug makes her understand it is an IV. Warmth encases her hand and it's the warmest she's been in months. Effie smiles, and then she sleeps.
When she wakes, Haymitch is gone and she panics, heart weakly pumping what little adrenaline it has left through her system, preparing to run. Her legs are too weak to move. So she stays, and thinks she's ready to die.
The distant hiss of a door and a hand, soft on hers, makes her open her eyes.
"It's okay. Rest. I won't leave again."
Effie is so incredibly tired, and she cannot stop the tide from pulling her into a dreamless sleep.
V.
Five days later, she's walking, or at least standing. Her legs are having difficulty moving, and she make it four steps to the chair before being helped down by Haymitch.
She stands in front of the mirror on day six. They tell her this is District Thirteen. Effie looks at herself, naked and ugly. Her face is a mosaic of purples, blues, and yellows, and she decides that colors are terrible. She dresses in a standard grey jumpsuit, and puts on the wig that Haymitch had insisted the rescue team raid her apartment for before deiciding it's not right.
None of it is.
Her ribs are too pronounced and her back is still sore from the lashings and she hates the way the colors mottled her pale flesh, red rings healing around her wrists where the cuffs had dug in. She doesn't look at those.
VI.
Haymitch comes to her, when she's finally in her own cramped quarters, and she doesn't realize how similar they are to her cells until it's too late. Stone and metal surround her, and Haymitch pulls her out of her thoughts.
"My space is bigger. You could stay there, if you wanted." Haymitch lifts his eyes to her, and she thinks maybe he's trying to smile.
Despite her yearning to say yes, a weak "No," tumbles from her trembling lips before she can stop it. She thinks that maybe Haymitch wants to reach out to her, the way his fingers twitch at his side.
"I'm three doors to the left if you change your mind."
Effie wakes up screaming. It's dark, too dark, and she's kicking at the blankets.
Toomuchtoomuchtoomuchtoomuch.
She feels her way to Haymitch's quarters on the third night. She knocks gingerly on the door, and perhaps he'd been awake, because he responds quickly, the metal door grinding open. The bed is made up and Haymitch is standing in clean, unwrinkled sleep pants and a white shirt.
Effie drops into the bed, and it's softer than she thought. Haymitch comes in behind her. He doesn't touch her, and Effie thinks that he's worried what would happen if he did. She seeks out his hand, warm to the touch, and nestles into his chest.
VII.
When Coin and Snow die, she doesn't feel a thing. Exhaustion grips her, and Haymitch helps her to sit when he finds her.
Haymitch kisses her then, softly, slowly, and she feels something again. It makes her feel okay. Sort of.
But she leans into him and watches Peeta and Katniss embrace, and she feels the sun on her face.
Haymitch leaves with Katniss, but not without pressing his lips to hers with an unspoken promise- it's okay, Eff, I'm here. Effie knows that this year, and all the years to come, will be different.
Better.
A/N: Review and let me know what you thought!