Fallout

Notes: Yeah yeah, I know, another one of my half-assed fics. Whatever. Going back to studying. Unedited for the win.
Word Count: 693
Pairing: HAYFFIE ~

"Do you still love me at all?"

He's caught off guard by her question. She knew it, she felt it. Maybe it was stupid — she liked to ask stupid questions, he said it himself. There's nothing productive that ever comes out her goddamn mouth. Nothing, nothing good.

When he doesn't answer, she shied away and returned to washing the dishes, and he went back to reading the paper.

It's been like this for years on end. Had they been kidding themselves this whole time? Maybe they have been. Maybe they were nothing extraordinary. Maybe they weren't infinite after all.

It was a chore for her, for him. When do you mark the end of a love? Is it when they become used to each other, or is it when you start to feel obligated to love? What is this feeling — contempt, unhappiness?

It's the same everyday. There's no surprise left in their relationship. It didn't even make her feel the slightest bit of happy anymore. It was always, You stupid bitch, you think you've got problems? or Yes, you worthless man, I do have problems because you fucking left me to the Capitol because of a stupid grudge you've had against me! or some sad variation of an old argument resurfaced to hurt and sting.

They weren't sweet and young. They weren't Katniss and Peeta. They couldn't grow together. They were much more destructive than that. It couldn't have possibly worked. After all, she thought their whole dynamic revolved around the basis of an apology for her own scars, her own memories.

It was just a grand old, "Sorry you were tortured to the verge of death. Sorry you got raped. Sorry you lost everything. Sorry your fiancee got killed and sorry your family was shot dead on the streets. Sorry. Sorry sorry sorry. Let's fuck and make up."

It was nothing but a sick and twisted absolution.

So maybe, maybe that's why they grew apart. Maybe that's why his touch never felt quite the same after a decade or so and maybe she lost her drive to keep up with him.

These cutting words and missed punches took a toll on Effie's health. At age forty-eight, she developed something-or-other, nothing he cared about really. Except he did. She was going to die, he knew that, and he tried so fucking hard to be good to her.

Yet he could control little of what he does when he's lost in the haze of alcohol.

She left him the following year of her diagnosis. That was it. That was the end. He spent the last years of her life blaming her and her heartlessness. How could you just leave? How could you forget so easily? he asked in his last call to her.

And he tried, oh god he tried to ignore to familiar push-and-pull of an oxygen tank in the background.

I hate you, he said.

I hate me too, she told him, wheezing and coughing and made that four-word-sentence drag on for ages. There was a click at the end and he listened to the dial tone for hours until he finally went to bed.

She died six days later.

Now he stands at the gate of the cemetery. Wishing. Waiting. Wanting. He's so used to being told that it wasn't him, it was her. And for years, he believed it. As he stares at her grave just up on the hill, though, he realizes that it was no one's fault but his.

Yes, she was the one who walked away. But he was the one who let her go.

Haymitch Abernathy, a ticking time-bomb, watches for a long time, reeling in the fallout of his cold and broken atonement. Many people said it was hate clouded with lust, an old discord layered with the need and wants of two human beings. Others — like hopeful Mrs Everdeen or soft Mr Mellark — have said that their alliance was rooted in comfort and repose.

They're all wrong. Cause once upon a time, he loved Effie Trinket. And once upon a time, she loved him.

Where did it all go wrong?