Of Black And Pink
Since he had heard his name, echoing in the silence of the Reaping so many years ago, Haymitch's life had turned to complete darkness. The once so bright colors of his youth had been replaced by some thick, smothering pain in his chest that would never go away. It pressed him down to the ground, filling his lungs, running through his veins. Everything around him had turned to black, the color of his nightmares. He had tried drowning his memories in the transparency of alcohol, but it had only made the images more vivid. He could still see it all. The blood, the pain, the death, the soft sound of a last breath exiting dying lungs. It always ended the same way. Nothing but darkness, slowly swallowing the faces he had once loved. Black, everywhere. He was turning blind. He could feel himself slipping away, day after day, the hopeless victim of an everlasting mechanism.
The first time he met her, he loathed her. He could feel hatred boil inside his veins as he heard her incessant chirping. She embodiedthe whole Capitol herself, from the top of her curly pink wig to the crystal point of her heels. He wanted her to suffer like he did, he wanted to rip away the hope and joy of her life. But, after a while, he discovered she was different. When they were alone, her mask fell, and she metamorphosed into someone completely different. Someone with scars. They may have been faint, but they existed. When he saw a single teardrop roll down her cheek as she looked through the train window, he could feel the restricted emotions threatening to pour off. Yet, unlike him, she let nothing slip away. And, just as he watched the tear crash on her knee, Haymitch felt like a pink drop had just stained his darkness.
Day after day, more pink drops began to color his world. One when he felt her hand clasping his as they watched the countdown. Another when he felt a cover hastily laid on him as he slept on the floor of the living room, a bottle still clutched in his hand. Another, when he felt her press a light kiss to his knuckles, as she rubbed a wet cloth on his feverish forehead, his face distorted by another nightmare. But it never made sense until that day. It was the 74th Hunger Games and he was, surprisingly, painfully sober. He walked into the living room and saw her. She had discarded her wig and wiped her make up away, and she was sleeping on the couch, her knees tugged against her chest. She wore nothing but a pale nightgown and, on top of it, one of his large shirts, in which she was wrapped. She seemed so fragile and pure at that instant. He walked to her and noticed she had a crumpled photograph pressed against her chest, representing Peeta and Katniss. It was still wet with tears.
At that very moment, he felt like she shone. And then he realized it. She was his spark. She was a faint, yet indestructible pink light glooming in his heart, protecting him from the dark limbs that would never stop surrounding him. He did not know how or why it had happened, but he had fallen in love with her. Effie Trinket, the light to his darkness.
When the rebellion had broken, he had been torn from her despite his desperate attempts to protect her. She had disappeared before he got the chance to tell her anything, to confess the strength of his feelings for her. It might have been better this way. He had to spare her from more pain. It was merely another tragic story. The star-crossed lovers that could never have been. She was probably dead already; there was nothing he could do. He expected the darkness to finally end him, yet it didn't. Because, buried deep within his chest, he still had hope. A pink light still glowed faintly in his pitch black heart.
She was alive. Tortured, broken, probably forever, but alive. For the first time in years, as he hold the door handle in his shaking hand, he could feel his chest hurting with something that wasn't sorrow. Something long forgotten. Love. And when he entered the room and saw her, her honey blond locks spread on the pillow and the scars and bruises on her skin, it all made sense. She was barely awake, but when their eyes met, light exploded around him, shattering the darkness forever. It blinded him, and he felt tears running on his cheeks, before he intertwined his fingers with hers, leaning onto her. He whispered in his ear three words she had never expected to hear from him, but desired forever. Then, very slowly, he pressed his lips onto hers for a light kiss.
Effie Trinket would always be the light to his darkness.