Haymitch has two tributes.
A boy, dark-haired, lanky, sallow-skinned, and a girl, a little wisp of a kid who's supposed to be fourteen but looks barely twelve with her blonde pigtails. Shitfy eyes, body trembling nervously. Terror written in stark lines all over their faces.
They're both prey, is Haymitch's first thought when he sees them being reaped. Never going to survive in the arena.
On the train, they gorge themselves on all the food they can, hunger finally satiated after a lifetime of starvation. The escort purses his lips and scowls at them, berating them for their uncouth behavior, and Haymitch wants to punch him in the face because he doesn't know what's it's like to come from nothing and suddenly have everything offered to you, to have all the food you could ever dream of right there under your nose - food that you didn't have to sweat for, to fight for, to bleed for. He has no idea how all of this feels, this little peacock from the Capitol with his ridiculous yellow canary hair and even more ridiculous name (Majoris Flutterbee, seriously?). He was born in silk sheets, never went a day hungry in his life, and he will never understand, and, god, does it pisses Haymitch off.
But even though his hands are itching to ball into fists, Haymitch breathes out and relaxes, because as he learned in a very painful lesson not so long ago, there are limits to rebellion. Yes, he does vaguely wonder what else the Capitol could do to him, that's true... but he's not foolish enough to want to find out. However, there is one question he'd like answered, that of the fate of last year's escort, his escort, the woman who drew his name out of the bowl. Did the Capitol had her killed, too? The question is poised on Haymitch's lips and he's just about to ask it when Majoris speaks up:
"I hope you have a good plan," he says, looking dismissively at the kids.
"Yeah, and it's a really simple one, too," Haymitch shots back. "They just have to stay alive."
Sarcasm: the best defense against Capitol stupidity.
"Are we going to die?" the boy suddenly asks.
His eyes are still wet from earlier tears, and gray, the gray of the Seam. Just like Micah's, and with that thought, Haymitch feels his heart constrict for his dead little brother. Anger rises, choking up his throat. He wants to tell the Capitol to fuck off, to find someone else - anyone else - to mentor these tributes. How can they give him two kids to care for when they took everything from him, took everyone from him? What a sick, twisted joke. But the girl's looking at him too now, her eyes holding the same intensity as the boy's, and Haymitch sees something in them, something that he hesitates to name. Is it hope? It certainly looks like it. The realization is sobering, injecting steel into his spine. These kids are counting on him, and he'll be damned if he lets them down.
"Not if I can help it," he answers.
And so he tries. It's his first time as a mentor, and since he didn't get one, he's not exactly sure what he's supposed to do. Fortunately the second day a fellow mentor from District 11 offers to teach him the ropes. Very soon Haymitch is playing the game the way the Capitol intended, coaching both the boy and the girl to be more likeable, meeting sponsors, smiling, lying, and generally being conniving. It's all about appearances, deceit, and cleverness. He likes that, and he wonders what that says about him.
Despite his best efforts, his tributes' scores are pitiful and they cut a poor image, overshadowed by pretty much everyone else. But Haymitch doesn't stop trying, for their sake, because they're still looking at him with so much hope, as if he could single-handedly change their fate, and it kills him to know they put that kind of trust in him. He doesn't deserve any of it.
When they both die in the bloodbath, a mere thirty seconds into the Games, he punches the wall over and over again, until all he can feel are his hands, bloody and raw.
I'll do better next time, he tells himself.
Next time comes too fast.
The year shots by like an arrow, and suddenly Haymitch has two tributes again. The boy's even skinnier than last time, all bones and sharp angles, but the girl looks strong and more capable, with her eighteen years of age in tow, and yes, Haymitch can work with that.
"You did it, you won," the girl says, looking at him like he's the Second Coming or something. "So maybe I can win too."
Yeah, he won. He still wonders how sometimes. Or if it wouldn't have been better if he hadn't.
"I watched you in the arena, you were stronger than those Careers," she goes on as the boy eats and eats and eats.
"Faster," Haymitch corrects. "And I had help."
The girl glances at her District partner, who hasn't said a word since the reaping.
"Can you do anything?"
Her query is only met with more silence.
It turns out he can't: he actually scores a one in training. Haymitch sighs and decides to focus on the girl, who managed to get a seven. She makes quite a impression during her interview, and he's fairly confident he can get sponsors for her.
Then the Games start. As expected, the boy dies on the first day. The girl lasts a little longer, but on the third day she runs afoul of the Career pack, and that's the end of her, and the end of hope for District 12.
Haymitch is starting to understand why every mentor he met has that same look in their eyes - not the Career ones of course, but all the others. It's a look that speaks of utter defeat and aching resignation, a look that says "We are mentoring dead tributes and it's a miracle when one of them actually returns from the arena."
It's a look that he'll see next time he's facing a mirror.
Blood.
It always starts with blood.
The taste of it in his mouth, the feel of it on his hands.
He slits the throat of the Career from One and his corpse smiles at him, fingers reaching towards his face. He wants to turn around and run, but his legs are paralyzed, rooted on the spot, and then it's not the Career anymore but Maysilee, Maysilee who slams him on the ground, blood dripping from her mouth and dead eyes staring into his own.
Screaming, screaming.
That he couldn't protect her, couldn't save her, that he can't save any of them. Then her body explodes into a flurry of pink birds, and they swarm him, stabbing every part of his body. Blood gushes red and the wave of it overwhelms him until he's drowning in it.
It's his own screams that wake him up.
His eyes open in the gloom of his room. Throat on fire, whole body sweating, vision blurry. He's gripping his knife so tightly that it takes him a whole minute before he can relax his fingers enough to let it go. Finally it clatters to the floor, and Haymitch just lay there on his bed, trying to convince himself that it's not real, that he escaped the arena and everything's fine.
Except he was never very good at lying to himself.
In the end he gets out of bed, stumbles to the fridge, takes out the bottle of liquor he bought the other day, and he drinks and drinks until he can't remember his own name.
Another year. Two other tributes.
He's used to it by now. The fear, the despair, the crying at the reaping. The shock on the kids' faces when they board the train. The façade of bravery they try to put on when they face the crowd of the Capitol. There's no hope in his tributes' eyes this year; they know full well they're going to die. Haymitch doesn't bother denying it.
He still does his job, anyway. Or tries to.
They never make it past the first day in the Games, but that night they come back to life in his dream, dying again and again while he watches helplessly. The night after they're joined by all the other tributes he failed to save, and Haymitch's sleep is even more fitful than the usual.
He finds the white liquor helps a bit.
Tributes.
That's all he sees now.
He lives alone in the Victor village, but whenever he goes to the Seam, all the kids he crosses path with are potential tributes in his mind. He's constantly sizing them up, gauging their strength, guessing their weaknesses. It's like a reflex he can't turn off. A way of seeing the world that has burrowed so far into his mind it has now become a part of it.
And everytime he does it, he wonders if he's going to have to mentor that kid next time. If he'll see him die. If that young, fresh face is going to join all the others in his nightmares.
In the end, he avoids going out as much as he can, staying shut in his house.
Loneliness suits him better.
"Do you ever count?" he asks Chaff one morning as they're both watching the Games.
"Count what?"
Chaff's eyes are firmly on the screen, following the course of the hovercraft as it sets out to retrieve the corpse of his male tribute. Haymitch lost his in the bloodbath, days ago. Their female tributes are still alive, though. Haymitch's one is badly injured and will probably die soon unless he can muster something up with a sponsor. As for the girl from District 11, she's holed up safely in a tree, away from the main fight zones and in a much better position.
"How many tributes you've lost," Haymitch clarifies.
"No."
The word is said with such finality that Haymitch can't help but laugh.
"Liar."
Silence. On the screen, the hovercraft lifts up the body of the twelve-year old boy, swallowing it in its belly. Then the scene cuts away to focus on some other tribute. Chaff gives an almost inaudible sigh.
"Thirty-one," he says.
Later that day, a cannon booms in the arena, and Haymitch thinks to himself: Sixteen.
In addition to keeping count of how many children he failed to save, Haymitch also keeps a running tally of the most common sentences uttered by his tributes. "We're going to die", comes first, followed closely by "It's not fair", and then, in third position, "I've never seen so much food in my whole life".
As for him, he knows exactly what to say and what to do by now.
Not that it ever makes a difference.
Ten years. That's how long it took him to give up. But finally, he's done it. Done with that all mentoring thing.
He can't keep doing this.
He can't.
So he drowns himself in alcohol, numbing his mind, wrecking his body - not that it matters. It's easier with the booze, easier not to care, easier to forget his tributes. They almost always die in the Cornucopia bloodbath, and he doesn't even watch the games anymore, just shut himself in his room and drinks until it's over.
He doesn't want to see them die, doesn't want to see them bloody, scared and in pain.
It happens in his dreams anyway.
And the years pass and pass.
At one point Majoris goes away, replaced by a woman. Young, bubbly, pink. Insufferable. Haymitch hates her even more than Majoris, and that's saying something. At least the old escort knew when to quit and had stopped pestering Haymitch long ago. But this Effie won't leave him alone, insisting he has to meet sponsors, that he can't keep ignoring the kids, that he must make his district proud.
"Really Haymitch! That's not proper mentor behavior!" she scolds him the first time she realizes he's drunk.
He laughs.
"And you'd know all about being proper, wouldn't you, sweetheart?"
Her eyes narrow while her mouth presses into a thin line. For some reason, Haymitch finds this funny. It's because of all the make-up, he decides. The slightest change in expression is amplified tenfold, until it doesn't even look human anymore.
"What should we do?" the boy asks Haymitch as if he had all the answers.
"Well, for starters, you're probably going to die. Accept it, and accept the fact that I can't do anything to save you. Now pass the jam."
"Haymitch!" screams a scandalized Effie. "Don't worry," she adds for the kids, "your mentor is going to clean up and then he is going to do his job."
Good luck with that, he thinks.
One night she shakes him awake, and his knife is at her throat before he can even properly process he's not asleep anymore. He stops short of breaking the skin, recognizing her just in time. A ragged breath wheezes out of his lungs. Her eyes are huge, afraid.
He steps backwards and almost loses his balance.
"Thought you were..."
He trails off and makes a vague gesture that he hopes will carry his meaning. His throat feels too raw to speak, his tongue is dried leather in his mouth and his head is swimming like crazy. Cold, clammy skin. A shudder. The whole world presses down on his eyelids when he briefly closes them.
God. Who decided hangovers should be a thing?
All he wants is to go back to sleep, bury himself in this sweet, black void that he sometimes reaches when he drinks just the right amount of liquor. But Effie's still there. When he looks at her, it's not terror he sees on her face, not anymore. More like pity, and now he's going to throw up. He doesn't want her pity, doesn't want anything from her.
"Looking for something, sweetheart?" he snarls aggressively.
She looks startled for a second, then her expression switches to something else - Haymitch's too hammered to bother deciphering what exactly - and suddenly she's pleading with him, her voice shrill and entirely unwelcome.
"Haymitch, you have to help them! They're dying!"
"Tell me something I don't know."
"Just try, for once! They're counting on you, you're their mentor, please, Haymitch! They just need some matches and something to burn so they won't freeze to death!"
Her words are like so much needles, scratching his skin, piercing his head, and god, it feels like torture. Why must he endure this? Why can't she understand?
"I can't help them, I can't help anyone!" he roars.
"Haymitch..."
"GO AWAY!"
She must, because he doesn't remember the conversation going any further.
Next morning she's crying for the kids, and it's ridiculous, really.
"What the hell are you blubbering about? You signed up for this!" he reminds her.
She lifts a ashen face towards him, her lips trembling. Her tears have left uneven tracks in her make-up.
"I didn't think... didn't think that..."
Her voice falters, pain rippling across her features.
"Didn't think what? That you'd get attached to the kids? Wake up, sweetheart. You're in the wrong line of work if you can't stomach misery and death. Do yourself a favor and go home."
But she stays, and Haymitch can't decide if he should feel admiration or disgust.
He's going through the motions, doing everything on automatic pilot. Reaping, train, Training Center, Games.
All the while Effie glowers at him but he's so far past caring there isn't even a name for it. She teaches the kids manners and decorum and etiquette. Then they die and Haymitch gets a year of reprieve before the cycle starts up again.
The Games go on and on. The victors are Careers, or sometimes, rarely, tributes from other districts.
Never his own.
One time, a girl wins the Games by pretending to be weak, getting all the other tributes to overlook her, and Effie comes to him, saying they should try that strategy for next year.
"Well, they wouldn't have to pretend," Haymitch groans.
He can taste the venom in his voice, but really, what else can he say? It's the truth. Most of the times his tributes are starving kids with no muscle whatsoever on their frame. When they're not, they have no idea how to fight, and it's not a skill you can pick up in two weeks.
"Please, Haymitch," Effie asks and asks again.
He caves in and tries her tactic so she'll stop nagging him.
His tributes still die, the boy from the cold, and the girl torn apart by a rabid Career.
No surprise there.
And then there's a volunteer.
Haymitch can hardly believe it at first. He thinks maybe he didn't hear right, maybe he's so drunk he's imagining things again. But no. She's the real deal, that girl with her dark braided hair, and there's a fire in her eyes that Haymitch hasn't seen in a long, long time. On the train, she drives a knife between his fingers, narrowly missing skin, and Haymitch thinks "Yes, definitely fire". The boy's not too shabby himself, with his likeable face and solid frame.
So when they ask for his help, both of them, he doesn't turn them down. First time in a decade or so he'll actually mentor his tributes. Better make it count.
They're off to a spectacular start with that whole girl on fire business, and Haymitch allows himself to believe that maybe, this year, the outcome will be different. Events certainly don't unfold the way they used to. An eleven in training? And she shot at the Gamemakers too? Haymitch decides he likes her, that he likes her spirit. She's also completely and infuriatingly pig-headed, and giving him more trouble than she's worth, but he likes her.
The boy is more reliable. He's the one who comes up with the star-crossed lovers theme, and it's perfect. The sponsors will love it; Haymitch can already imagine them reaching towars their purses to keep his tributes alive. He still doesn't allow himself to think maybe one of them will make it out of the arena, but he's not very far from it.
And it scares him more than it should.
Then the Games start. First day, second day, third day. They're still alive, both of them. Haymitch focuses the sponsors' money on the girl: he learned long ago splitting it up isn't a valid strategy. It's the best choice. The girl's a survivor, she stands more chance than the boy. When she forms an alliance with Chaff's girl, him and Haymitch exchange a knowing look. It's not the first time, but it's always a relief when their kids don't try to murder one another. Of course, it usually ends badly.
When the little girl dies, sparking a riot in her home district, Haymitch goes to Seneca Crane and pleads, selling the star-crossed lovers idea like he never sold anything in his life.
It works.
They change the rules, and when his tributes find each other again, sponsors are lining up, eager to send them gifts. The girl's a good enough actor, Haymitch has to admit. As for the boy, he's clueless of course, but that's for the best. Their performance ends up being all the more believable.
The number of remaining tributes dwindle until the inevitable showdown. When it happens, it's brutal and horrifying, and the Capitol citizens are as delighted as ever.
Then the fight's over, and his two tributes are still standing. Still breathing. Haymitch can hardly believe it. Of course, that's when they change the rules again.
Well, at least District 12 will finally get a victor, Haymitch thinks, too dejected to feel true anger.
But the girl decides otherwise, and with the berries stunt, she forces the hand of the Capitol in a move as bold as it is unprecedented.
And just like that, the Games are over. The Games are over, and Haymitch still has two tributes.
No.
Two victors.
That's not something he ever expected, and for the first time since, oh, forever, he actually laughs. A genuine, happy peal of laughter that starts in his stomach and expands all the way to his chest. Then it's a thank you to Katniss that makes it past his lips, a thank you because she's broken the cycle of death and despair, and he's feeling something that he thought he would never feel again. Something he thought he had lost forever, so small and yet so vital.
When he raises his glass and drinks to all the tributes he couldn't save, to all the ghosts of his past he can never atone for, he also drinks to his future, and to that one piece of humanity the girl named Katniss just gave him back.
Hope.