Title: Don't Pretend You Care
Author: karebear
Rating: T
Characters: Effie, Haymitch
Disclaimers (Hunger Games): The Hunger Games trilogy was written by and belongs to the brilliant Suzanne Collins. I'm just borrowing the characters and world for a short while.
Summary: "Blame it on the alcohol." Haymitch and Effie through the years.
Notes: Another one-shot built through "snapshots" over years (kinda like "Constancy"). I find this format really works for me.
When Effie Trinket first meets Haymitch Abernathy, he is already an expert at drinking. Not the way her peers are, college students and fellows in the television business all. They drink to celebrate, to have fun. They drink because it makes them laugh, makes them more willing to put in long hours and late nights if they know a trip to the bar is in it for them at the end of the shift. They drink carefully mixed cocktails and artisan beers.
Haymitch drinks whatever he can get his hands on, shares with no one, doesn't care who sees him, and doesn't laugh at all. He is twenty-one years old and has been more drunk than sober for five years.
Effie only knows that her predecessor has warned her about him, recommended that she stay away from him at all times except when they are required to be on camera together.
She doesn't care. She doesn't plan to be assigned to District 12 for very long.
It is the 59th Annual Hunger Games, her fourth, when he actually speaks to her for the first time.
"Drink?" he offers smoothly, holding out a wine glass, of all things. And she takes it.
Well, they are at a Capitol dinner after all, on camera, and he's cleaned up and shaved and put on a sleek suit and tie that some stylist has tailored just for him. And he looks good, better than she wants to admit. He looks his age: twenty-five, the prime of his life. He looks a little bit like he might be glad to be alive after all.
It doesn't last, of course. Only a few days later they're back to their usual awkward silence in the control booth, pretending not to share a guilty glance as their first tribute dies, barely clear of the Cornucopia.
By the time 12's second tribute, the girl, is killed, the Games have been going for nearly a week, and Haymitch is so deep in the bottle that Effie is sure he wouldn't hear her even if she knew what to say.
The next year, the 60th Games, people pay a lot of attention to Haymitch because it's been ten years since his Quarter Quell. He has to spend a lot more time on camera than usual, and that means she has to spend a lot more time than usual coaching him on how to behave, what not to say.
"I thought I was supposed to be the mentor," he growls, and she just snaps that since he's been doing this for even longer than she has he might at least have figured out how to look competent.
It's the closest she's ever come to blaming him for the deaths of 12's children, year after year, but she's bitter because it's starting to look like she's going to be stuck in the worst assignment ever for the rest of her life, and even worse, she cares that she has a "rest of her life" when what that life entails is standing there pretending to be happy while she picks the names of kids who won't.
She's sure those kids might have a chance if he could stay sober for five minutes. If he could just pretend to care.
It takes another three years before she allows herself to admit that she seeks him out, the one stable thing she can rely on to make it through the Games.
She puts on makeup and practices maintaining shallow, bubbly composure, while what she's really waiting for are the bubbly drinks she'll share with him - champagne when the cameras are on them, the harder stuff when they're not.
He's already beyond drunk, way over the line of "passably functional" he has to maintain for the Capitol watchers, when she finds him, the last night before the Games begin. She joins him silently and waits for him to pass her the bottle - they don't bother with glasses anymore, not when they're alone. She's not an alcoholic, she only drinks with him, but it's been long enough that she understands why he does it, and she certainly doesn't blame him anymore. She's stopped asking to be transferred to another District. In fact, she thinks she'd throw a fit if they ever actually moved her.
Haymitch snorts when he sees her coming, slurs something about the fact that he must not be a complete failure as a mentor after all, because at least he's taught her something. Even if that "something" is only how to lie to herself.
"Stay alive," she murmurs, behind a swig large enough to make her choke. "Only decent advice there is, isn't it?"
"To us," Haymitch grunts, taking the bottle back.
"Cheers," she titters in return, feeling hollow.
Then comes the year she gets drunk enough, desperate enough, to kiss him, because at the start of the 67th Annual Hunger Games she realizes that through whatever this ritual is that they've developed, not only does she seek him out, but he's the only one she feels like she doesn't have to lie to.
He holds her and calls her by a bunch of other women's names.
The only one she recognizes is "Maysilee," his ally in the Quarter Quell, who died at his side and refused to kill him, no matter what. The knowledge that all he sees in her are ghosts shocks her into immediate sobriety, and she claws her way out of his arms and goes looking for something else to drink, but there isn't anything left, he's finished it all.
The year after that, they're back to not speaking.
Six months later, when the 68th Victory Tour makes the requisite stop in District 12, when Effie finds Haymitch, he's looking even more sad and sorry and like a hopeless excuse for a human being than usual.
The schedule doesn't allow much time for conversation, but she finds a private moment to escape with him to a secluded corner with their usual large bottle of white liquor.
When she asks him what's wrong, he tells her in his familiar broken slur that only days before her arrival there had been a mine explosion, worse than usual. Several men died, and after she leaves on the Capitol train, the mayor will present their orphaned children with commemorative medals.
"It's Victory, right?" he spits, rhetorically.
She tells him she's really sorry.
"Just life in District 12. Don't pretend you care."
It's the first time she's ever stopped to think where Haymitch Abernathy would be if he hadn't been Reaped all those years ago. He probably would have been in that mine.
Year 74, Haymitch turns forty, and she is younger than he is but not by too much, and she feels impossibly old.
She can't decide if she's stopped caring or if she's just gotten too good at pretending like she's okay with all of this, but she realizes she no longer approaches the Reaping Ball with dread she has to work to conceal. The nervous laughs come easily to her now. It's so much easier to lie than tell the truth. She doesn't even need to drink anymore, to manage it.
Haymitch does, obviously. She catches his eye quickly through the crowd before the cameras start to roll, though they both know better than to share anything more than the recognition of two people who have been doing this for decades.
They have no expectations for District 12, not anymore.
How can you be surprised if you have no expectations? But she is surprised when she grabs at one of those little slips of paper that follow her through her whole life, and when she reads the name into the microphone, she's answered not with resigned silence but yelling.
"I volunteer!"
For what?
She'd forgotten that anyone could freely offer to walk into the Capitol's net, to die.
Nobody does that.
It's the first rule she sees Katniss Everdeen break.
And when Haymitch staggers drunkenly onto the stage and screams all the things he knows better than to say in front of the cameras, he breaks all of their rules too.
It's a good thing he falls and knocks himself unconscious, because she might've done it for him if he hadn't.
In the control booth, this year, for the first time, they have something they've never had before: hope. And it means a little more relaxation and warmth that doesn't come from the bottle, a little more closeness than they know is smart, but they don't care who is watching. When Katniss and Peeta both step out as winners, Haymitch is the one who kisses her. He pretends he just got caught up in the moment. She isn't so sure.
The next year, it's another Quarter Quell, and Haymitch Abernathy is the least of anyone's concerns. Still, her heart seizes in her chest and her voice falters just a bit as she reads his name. He catches her eye, mouths "Don't pretend you care."
And Peeta volunteers.
She tries to talk to Haymitch while they watch Katniss and Peeta fight for far more than survival in the arena, but he pushes her away, and she has no idea why she should be disappointed.
It may be the first time she drinks more than he does.
Katniss sets the world on fire.
Haymitch disappears.
The Peacekeepers arrest her and she realizes that she doesn't feel safe in the Capitol, and she realizes that she never has, not since she met him.
They ask her what she knows and the answer is "nothing" and "too much" at the same time.
She shivers alone in a cell and dreams of warmth and alcohol.
She hears words like "traitor" and "rebellion" among sporadic pain between the endless stretches of empty white when no one speaks to her at all.
She wonders why he never told her.
She hears his harsh voice in her head and whatever's left of her heart breaks along with every rule she's ever set for herself.
"Don't pretend you care."