The first time he saw her, he was drunk beyond belief and he thought that she was a hallucination because nobody was actually that colourful. She was wearing turquoise and pink because clashing colours were in fashion in the Capitol that year and Haymitch wondered if there had ever been a more obnoxious outfit. Over the years she would wear a number of similarly horrendous things which gave him a headache, usually because he was already hungover granted but she should have made more of an effort to accommodate that, but he would always remember the outfit from that first reaping as being the worst of the lot.
She hadn't introduced herself to him but she had pulled the names of two twelve year olds out of the bowl of names and the fact she kept smiling through that and made the two crying children shake hands on the stage was enough for him to hate her.
"Effie Trinket." she said to him on the train and he was drunk enough to wonder if she was just garbling noises before he realised that she was telling him her name. "You must be Haymitch." To his credit he had extended his hand to her and given a half-hearted handshake, but that was because the last District 12 escort had been there since he was old enough to remember the Hunger Games and only left because she died last year – the mentors for District 12 did not get promoted – so he wasn't going to try to piss her off deliberately even though she looked like she was incredibly tightly wound and it would be easy. He probably would only need to mention that her pink hair was definitely a wig and she would be shrieking something unintelligible at him. He almost wanted to try, but she hadn't done anything yet and he refused to give her a validation for what she probably already thought about him. "When are you going to start preparing the tributes? I was thinking – and please, let me know if this isn't how you do things – maybe leave them tonight, let them settle, and then tomorrow you can go over strategies and things like that." He wanted to laugh at how naïve she was, wanted to ask if she had ever seen the games, if she realised exactly what he job was now.
"That's not really how I do things." Effie made a little 'oh' sound as though she was interested in hearing his opposing methods. "I usually just leave them to it. They're dead anyway." The shock on her face made him smile.
"I don't think-"
"What good can I do for two twelve year old that look like a strong wind could break them in half?" he snapped at her, not meaning to, but not wanting to have to go through this again. The last escort had been similarly displeased about this, but she had left him to it anyway. "They've never held a weapon before, they're too scared and small to make allies. They'll be dead at the cornucopia." Effie scowled and stormed out of the room. Maybe she'd try and make them likeable for sponsors in the Capitol, but if they couldn't survive the first day then that was completely futile. A sponsor can't remove a knife from your head after all.
And Effie did coach them, or she tried to. Besides being scared, the two children she had reaped were utterly without personalities. At least the little girl was quite sweet looking, the boy would attract no admirers, not in the Capitol. They earned a three and a four in training. Even Effie was surprised they had managed to get any points at all. Once they'd gone to bed, sickeningly pleased with the 'high scores' they had earned, leaving Haymitch trying not to spit his whiskey out in laughter, he was left alone with Effie.
"They're going to die." she said so quietly, and he very nearly thought he'd imagined it. He clapped a hand on her shoulder.
"Finally getting it, sweetheart." He had no sympathy for her. She wasn't the one who was going to die, and it was her own fault for getting overinvolved with these children. If she just ignored them like he did it might be a little easier for her. It was still bad, but it was bearable.
"I don't know why you can't at least try." Effie hissed at him, and he was almost impressed with the little bit of fire she was showing him. So few people in that Capitol managed to show anything like that, so few people there cared at all about anything. Maybe he would hate Effie a little less than them, maybe not if she kept wearing dresses like that – pink and green today, always with the fucking pink.
"I've been doing this a lot longer than you have. Believe me, the first three years I did. It doesn't make a bit of difference, they died anyway. Unless they go in with some talent, they're never going to beat a career or even someone else from an outlying District who does." Effie chewed on her lip and looked down at the ground. "Pick one out of that bowl next year who has any kind of discernible talent and then I might consider trying to get them ready. Until then it's just wasted time that I could be drinking in." Effie sighed and eyed the bottle he was drinking out of. "You want some?" he asked, shaking it in her direction.
"No thank you, I'm sure it's covered in germs and I wouldn't want to catch anything." Her smile never faltered and he was actually impressed. "I'm going to bed now."
"Tell them to act as young as possible tomorrow at their interviews, people love a hopeless case. They'll send food if they need it because they'll feel sorry for them. And tell them to run away from the cornucopia no matter what's there. They're not going to survive if they go anywhere near it." Haymitch told her with a heavy sigh as she stood up. She paused for a second as though she was mentally noting down what he was telling her. She didn't thank him or say anything for that matter, she just turned on her heel and retreated to her room, and he liked her a lot more for that than he would have if she was grateful. They were going to die anyway; he was just trying to soothe the guilty conscience she was giving him by delaying the inevitable. He sighed again and drained the rest of his bottle quickly before he went to bed.
The boy was a disaster at the interviews and he was dead, or as good as anyway. Effie hadn't seemed surprised. The girl however had the audience in the palm of her hand – the pigtails Effie suggested, which were in fashion with children in the Capitol that year, were genius. She looked nine or ten, not twelve. They wouldn't quite make people think of her like she could be their child, people in the Capitol didn't think like that, but hopefully it was enough to touch a motherly or fatherly instinct inside some people. She had apparently touched one in Effie who cried when she said goodbye, whispering something in her ear.
"What did you say?" Haymitch couldn't stop himself from asking.
"Just what you told me to."
Haymitch told himself wouldn't watch the games with her, but Effie hadn't asked him to anyway. She made herself comfortable on the sofa and he sat at the dining table pretending he wasn't watching her out of the corner of his eye. She kept smoothing her hands over her skirt and he didn't know why he found that so irritating.
"Can you stop doing that?" Haymitch eventually hissed through gritted teeth and Effie turned to see him and gave a little smile.
"Oh, you're still here? Forgive me for not noticing, you're rather quiet when you're not drunkenly stumbling into the furniture." She turned back and he could just imagine the pleased little look she was wearing. She was quicker with a comeback than he'd expected her to be. She turned her attention back to the large screen she was preparing to watch the games on, and Haymitch readied himself for what was to come.
Their male tribute was the first dead. The girl ran from the cornucopia and into a boy from five. He snapped her neck on sight.
Effie sat very quietly for a second before she brought her knees up to her chin and rested her head on them. Haymitch took it upon himself to get up and switch the screen off, unable to be annoyed with her. He sat down beside her and put a hand on her shoulder, half expecting her to scream at him when she looked up. He should have predicted that she would be in tears; she seemed a very over-emotional person which was odd to him. People from the Capitol rarely showed any emotions at all, let alone ones that made them seem vulnerable, dare he say human. He allowed himself to put an arm around her and she cried on his shoulder like she was trying to purge herself of the guilt he was sure she felt for picking their names in the first place.
"Maybe next year." Effie sighed when she had calmed down a little. It was a phrase he would come to know as well as he knew her, something she would say every year which made them both feel a little better, not that Haymitch would ever admit that it helped him, until they actually found their victor.