Title: Fill
Author: karebear
Rating: T
Characters: 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: On the way to the 51st Hunger Games; the train rolls on toward the Capitol, and seventeen-year-old Haymitch Abernathy discovers his new favorite phrase: "open bar."
Notes: Another mood/feeling exploration, not much in the way of plot. It's the first time the muse has ever had me draw a picture first, usually it's the other way around. Anyway, here's the picture (just remove the spaces): ht tp:/ bearonthecouch .deviantart .com /#/d4xykt0
His brother's screams and his mother's accusations still haunt him. He wakes up sweating; tangled in the cold, dead arms of a girl who stares at him with sightless eyes that burn: his fault.
The panic is overwhelming in the night, when he can't sleep and he can't stay awake because he's trapped behind doors that slide shut and latch quietly, refusing to be propped open; surrounded by windows of thick bulletproof not-glass that show nothing but a meaningless landscape, a jumble of color moving by so quickly that any attempt to focus on it only makes the constant spikes of pain in his head and stomach exponentially more unbearable. So he ignores the windows, like he ignores everything else.
He wanders listlessly through the train, putting one foot in front of the other. Constantly moving but not going anywhere. He hears the whispers and mumbles that follow him: the other victors from the other districts who ignore him because he's from 12, the stylists and attendants who approach him nervously and quickly retreat from his hostile demeanor. Soon enough, the only person he sees is the avox they send to give him pages and pages of schedules and notes, or an occasional meal tray. At least she doesn't try to engage him in conversation. He watches her but he sees somebody else's face: the dead girl he doesn't love anymore, because he doesn't love anything anymore, he can't.
The screen inside his bedroom-car shows constantly looping repeats of last year's Quarter Quell, until he rips it off the wall, and dares them to do something about it. They just clean it up: his avox, and another one. He helps because he feels guilty, and the sharp shards pricking his bare fingers are more real than anything else he can remember feeling.
He knows the tributes are waiting for him, in their own car a few sliding-glass doors away. He knows them both. They were in school together before he stopped going. The boy is eighteen, older than he is, and he glares at Haymitch as though it's his fault they're here, being shipped off to the Capitol to die. The sixteen-year-old girl hides in his arms and shoots nervous glances at both of them. It makes him want to cry and throw up at the same time.
He thinks it was better before, when everybody knew that nobody from District 12 came out alive. He didn't need a mentor and he doesn't know how to be one. He can't even take care of himself. Now that he's here... they want a miracle, some magic words of wisdom that will keep them alive. He doesn't tell them that he can't help them and that they don't want him to anyway. Surely they already know. Everyone knows what happened to his family.
He was never particularly well liked even before. He never had many friends. But now, people treat him as though he has some sort of contagious disease. He loiters around the always-empty big houses that loom over the rest of the district, like a ghost. Already dead, alone in an enforced quarantine zone. The Peacekeepers, already strict, have been worse since he came home, as if his dead family wasn't enough of a message. Everybody knows it's his fault. The special packages of food delivered through the year were hardly enough to make up for the brutal beatings and executions in the public square. It's as though the president expected his unanticipated survival to inspire a district full of tired and worn-out adults to suddenly start thinking about breaking the rules. Haymitch almost wants to laugh at the idea, but he can't remember how. The only thing he's inspired them all to do is hate him.
He pushes his way through the train, past the accusing eyes of the Capitol people who sniff disapprovingly and cluck their tongues. But as a victor, he's allowed to go anywhere he wants. There is food in almost every car, soft fabrics, twinkling lights. He barely sees any of it. He comes to a car he hasn't been to yet. All dark, like the deepening twilight of a cloudy night. Only a few muted lights in the ceiling. And quiet. Empty. Just what he needs.
A half-empty bottle rests on the bar, shot glasses in a neat line behind it.
His eyes scan the wall, rack after rack of colorful labels stacked in welcoming patterns. The carpet is thick and soft under his boots as he walks toward the bar; all slick, shiny, reddish dark wood, perfect and immaculate. He climbs onto the barstool and spins around: once, twice, until his stomach protests, and he stills. And reaches out for the bottle, smooth glass, solid and heavy in his hand. Pretty, like everything else here, nothing like the paper-wrapped containers and dented metal flasks he sees at home. He recognizes the contents though: white liquor, a sharp scent that burns. He's never had any. He tilts the bottle in his hand and watches the clear liquid flow back and forth through the colored glass. And he pours, splashing over the top of the tiny little shot glass. How can an amount this small be enough to do anything?
He freezes, listening to his heart beating loudly for a few moments as he waits for an accusation. But none comes, except for the accusations in the silence that he would do anything to drown. So he clutches the shot glass tightly and swallows the contents, coughing as his eyes water and the burn that tastes like the raw cleaning chemicals they'd used in school cuts down his throat. He tries again, and it goes down smoother this time, the burn settling into a pleasant heat, like a furnace on a winter's day, taking away some of the shivering cold.
He does it again and again, filling the shot glass expertly now, stopping just at the top. Pour and swallow, filling himself up until all he's left with is warmth and bright colors and a quiet kind of humming that merges with soft rhythm of the rolling wheels under his feet, and he doesn't care where he's going anymore.