Effie Trinket has been a part of the rebellion for longer than several of its keystone members. Yet she has passed no secret messages, attended no clandestine meetings. Her role in the whole damned affair has been almost unbearably simple, and yet so, so difficult.
She hasn't told anyone.
Finding out about the rebellion was almost laughably easy. Haymitch was drunk (again), but it wasn't his usual sloppy inebriation; it was full-on lurching, falling-down, hey-Effie-why're-there-two-of-you drunk, and she was more than a little tipsy herself. Because their eighth pair of tributes had just died, and she wasn't sure if she'd ever be able to paste the chirpy Escort mask back on again.
She'd lugged Haymitch back to his room, and when she'd tipped him into his bed and was about to remove his boots, she'd heard something that made her freeze in her tracks.
"Jus' wait 'til we get rid of these fucktards," he'd slurred in his half-sleep. "No mor' Games, ev'…" And then he'd started snoring, and anything else he'd been about to say was lost.
What made Effie stop was that he'd said we. We meant more than one. It meant more than just another of Haymitch's incoherent threats.
It meant organization.
Effie has been trained as an Escort, and like all Games employees this means at least one course in recognizing the sounds of revolution and silencing them. Usually by telling a higher authority. "Never be afraid to tell your superiors about something you hear, no matter how trivial," her instructor had told the class. "There's no shame in alerting an offical to a problem, even if it turns out to be nothing."
She wrote a letter. Just a draft, nothing serious, not really. Just words on paper.
When she'd finished, she sat and stared at it for what felt like hours. She thought about the Games–about the poor lost tributes that she'd had to watch as they murdered and were murdered. Jacob and Deirdre, Henry and Willow, Thomas and Molly… the list went unbearably on. And the children from the other districts… she never even knew most of them, not really. Not beyond a handful of interviews and whatever information the announcers gave during the games.
She thought about how the people in Twelve looked; so pale and gaunt and strong-but-frail, so afraid and brave. About how everything they owned was equally pale and gaunt because they can't afford better.
She thought of a place where children did not have to slaughter each other each year to satisfy the people's stupid, supposeddesire for some kind of bloodshed; a place where the shadow of death does not hang over everyone's tomorrows. A place where maybe, maybe, a silly Capitol girl could love a broken Twelve victor without constant fear for his life.
She crumpled up the letter and threw it into the metal trash bin next to her desk.
On a moment's reflection, she pulled it out again and took it into the little kitchen. She stood for a moment in front of the stove, wondering at herself; then she turned on the burner and threw the note on top of it.
She didn't return to bed until it had completely burned away.
Over the years she has heard more, but not much. Whispers in the corners, accidently overheard. Some random bits of conversation between Haymitch and some of the other victors when they don't notice her.
Haymitch never says anything about it again while he can see her, even when he's drunk (all the time, now).
She sometimes considers telling someone when she's lying awaking late at night, but then she thinks back to that burning curl of paper, and she is quiet.
She takes each piece; every wisp of information, all the scraps of forgotten note in Haymitch's indecipherable scrawl that she finds sometimes under the couch or in the trash; and she stiches it together into a kind of hope. It's not much. But it's enough that she can hold together the fraying dream of laughing children and green fields at the center of her heart.
Effie listens, and she is silent.