It was bad enough that he didn't show up at the Reaping, and after what had happened at the previous year's Victory Banquet, Effie wanted to protect their team from another embarrassment, but she regretted not letting the Peacekeepers come and drag Haymitch to the station as soon as she had crossed his threshold.
"Haymitch!" she called out, hoping she wouldn't have to venture any further. "Haymitch, we have to go, the kids are saying their goodbyes!"
"Haymitch?" She tried a little louder, but when he failed to answer yet again, she pushed herself away from the door with a sigh and started marching through the hall, hoping that there would be no rats around the house, because she was wearing peep-toes.
She eyed the corners, and especially the shadows under the various pieces of once fashionable furniture as she walked through the living room, and she had been downright surprised when she didn't run into a whole colony of them when she entered the kitchen. Then the longer she stared at the chaos in there the more likely she thought the fear of food poisoning to be the reason keeping them away.
Never in her life she would have though bread and cheese to be able to go through so many various stages of decay, and even though she suspected whatever was under the lid of the pots sitting by the wall under the window had purposefully been left there to ferment, she couldn't help giving them a wide berth as she hurried on to get out through the door on the other side of the kitchen.
"Haymitch!" she cried out again, crossing the dining room back to the hall. "Haymitch, we really don't have time for this!" She stopped at the foot of the stairs, feeling more and more uneasy about keeping the children waiting, even though getting their mentor to the station with as little involvement of the authorities as possible had been in their best interest too.
"Haymitch, please," she said with a final sigh, then she grabbed the handrail and started climbing the stairs.
"Haymitch, are you in there?" She halted at the top, staring at the bathroom door that he had left half open and from behind which she could hear the sound of running water. During their years together, he had been late for many reasons, but getting himself presentable had never been one of them.
"Haymitch?" She edged closer to knock on the frame, feeling a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "I hate to interrupt you, but the children are saying their goodbyes as we speak, so… Haymitch?"
She listened hard for an answer, and when none came, she reached for the handle and moved to open the door, bracing herself for whatever sight would greet her on the other side.
The tiles were of a nondescript cream colour that has never been in fashion, and so couldn't go out of it either, with one or two missing here and there, and an enormous pile of laundry was sitting in one of the corners, but since Haymitch wasn't lying on the floor, or even worse, floating in the bathtub, she just pursed her lips and turned off the shower with a huff, cursing his stupid jokes about how he preferred to take as few showers as possible to minimize the risk of slipping, falling and drowning.
As frustration started to get the better of her, she left his toothbrush where he had dropped it in the sink, and marched on to find him and drag him to the station, in his pyjamas, if she had to. She even stopped calling out for him, just went from door to door, right until in the third room, she had finally found him.
He was still in bed, snoring contentedly, as if he had nothing more important to do in the whole wide world.
"There you are." She let out a relieved sigh. "Come on, you have to get up, we have to go," she ordered, walking to the window to open the curtains and let in some light, but since the amount of dust falling out of them suggested they haven't been moved in years, she let them go and backed away quickly, before a spider or two had the chance to land on her head too.
"I know you don't care about how it all looks, but this is no way to live," she grumbled when she could finally finish coughing. "This place is going to make you sick. You should find someone who could help you at least with the kitchen, because…" Let her voice trail away as she turned her back on the window and set eyes on him.
He was still lying fast asleep and stark naked except for what looked to be a torn off the sleeve of a shirt wrapped around his left foot, but at least he wasn't only pretending not to hear her.
Taking a deep breath and reminding herself that both their tributes looked way too scared to be left alone on the train for long, she stepped closer the bed and put a knee on it so that she could reach him. "Haymitch," she whispered his name, touching his shoulder. "Haymitch, we have to go." She caressed his upper arm with a sigh. "Haymitch!" She leaned a little closer, but not too close, because he desperately needed a shower and because the last thing she needed was getting punched in the face when he came around.
It soon proved to be the best idea she's had all day.
One moment he was lying still, seemingly dead to the world around him, then in the next he was jolting upright with a roar, brandishing a knife. She jumped back as quickly as she could, but tripped and fell against the corner of the nightstand, brushing a few bottles off it.
There was no way of telling if the sound of breaking glass, her cry as she had hit the floor or the sun in his face had been the one to stop him, but he froze abruptly and stared at her with eyes so wide they would have looked comical in any other situation.
"Effie?" he croaked. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"I came to wake you up, because it's Reaping Day and you were nowhere to be found!" she screamed at him in a voice so shrill that it made him jump. "And I'm bleeding all over my dress," she added pitifully, as she looked down on her hand.
"Oh, fuck," he breathed, dropping the knife instantly.
"Indeed!" She hissed, feeling way to shaken to care about his manners.
"Effie, I didn't…" he all but stammered, and he even had the audacity to raise a hand as if she had been the one who needed to be dealt with carefully.
"I'm fine." She whispered as her throat started tightening. "And we don't have time for this. The children are waiting." She closed her eyes and swallowed hard to try to calm herself, but she soon found out that with every passing moment it became harder to open them again.
"Princess." The bed creaked as Haymitch slipped off it, but Effie only looked at him when he was kneeling right in front of her.
"I'm fine," she told him again, in an even shakier voice.
"Let me see," he said, reaching for her hand and she didn't fight him. "It's not that bad." He sighed, as he pried her fingers open and saw that while the cut was quite long, it wasn't deep.
"Yeah, you should totally give me a matching one on my left hand too," she mumbled.
"Sneak in to my house again and I just might do that," he said almost flatly, with only a hint of a sarcastic smile around his lips.
"You think that's funny?" Effie snapped.
"No." He shook his head way too seriously for her liking, before he took a deep breath and let it out with an irritated sigh. "Look, princess, I didn't know it was you–"
"But it makes things even worse!" she cried out. "It could have been any other member of staff or… or a Peacekeeper! And then Victor or not, you'd be–"
"I know."
"And yet you–" She motioned towards the bed where his stupid knife was still sitting on the pillow.
"I do," he cut her off once again.
"Well, that's just crazy!"
"I know," he hissed, then ran his hand through his hair, "but still, don't come here ever again. Please." He dipped his head slightly to make her look him in the eyes.
Realising that this was to be one of those things with which they would never find a middle ground, Effie held his gaze for only about two seconds before she pursed her lips and turned her head to the side. "As you wish," she said with a sniff. "It's a pigsty anyway."
"It is," he replied without an ounce of shame.
"Am I right to presume that you don't even have a proper first aid kit?" she asked, trying to sound as disapproving as she could under the given circumstances.
"Absolutely."
"Whatever has happened to your foot anyway?" She eyed it with a slight frown.
"Broken glass." He shrugged as if such things were expected to happen every day.
"Like I said; a pigsty." She wrinkled her nose.
"But I can get you the other half of this shirt." He suggested, as he got to his feet and helped her to get up too. "It's clean. It came out of your package."
"My pack— you mean the package with your outfits for the train?" she gasped.
"All the shirts look the same, I'll just use one of them twice," he said nonchalantly.
"I haven't even heard that," she groaned, raising her good hand to silence him. "So just go and get it. And the cerulean tie too, if you please."
"The what?"
"The blue tie," She took a step back to show him her outfit and the shade she had in mind. "The one labelled as 'Day 1'. To cover the bandages."
"I'll see what I can do." He gave her a nod.
"You still have it, don't you?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.
"I do, of course I do," he said as he started walking away, limping only slightly, but as soon as he had been out on the corridor, Effie could have sworn she had heard him mumble that sounded uncomfortably like 'somewhere'.
I'm baaack! :)
Please let me know what you think.