Heaven and Earth
By Vifetoile
Haymitch reflects on the women in his life.
Disclaimer: My first Hunger Games fic, and I don't own a thing about it.
Author's Notes: Most sections in this story, have references to other works, and I'll explain them at the end.
Also, funny thing, I honestly tried to write this story in past tense, but I think there's something about Hunger Games fic that makes it adhere straight to present tense.
ooooo
Part One: Mama
Since he was little, he thinks of Mama alongside the big oven in their kitchen. The oven was sculpted from some kind of clay, and Mama, even after a long day of working in the mines, sits in front of the stove, heating up bread, and tell her little boys stories.
Haymitch and Hayen never were too old for stories. Hayen would sit in Mama's lap, because he was the youngest, and Haymitch would lean on her leg. Mama is a big woman, tall and strong, and to her little boys she's the sky and the earth all in one, but better, because Mama's memory is vast, and holds all the stories a boy could want.
Haymitch's favorite story is about the wicked king, who devours his own children, and whose wife spirited away her sixth child to be raised in secret. And because the king has a magical crown that could let him see anything on the earth and anything in the heavens, the baby is hung in a cradle suspended from the branches of a high tree, to sway and rock gently in the breeze between earth and sky. And so the baby grows up, safely, to manhood, to destroy his wicked father.
That, to Haymitch, is perfection. To be suspended, safe, where no one can see you or find you and you're in no hurry to do anything but grow strong so that you can… you can… Haymitch never thought that far ahead.
In later years, he thinks of his mother sitting by the stove, her back bent with weariness, her voice light with the stories she's spinning. And she's a big woman, too strong for the Capitol to hurt, and he misses her, he misses his sky and the soil beneath his feet.
Part Two: Jess O' Mine
Her name is Jessamine, and he calls her Jess O' Mine, but only where no one else can hear them, where they curl close to each other, and whisper.
Admittedly, Jessamine is not very good at whispering. She is better at singing. And she does sing to him, a charming ditty that her family has handed down:
"Younger than springtime are you,
Brighter than laughter are you,
Angel and Lover, Heaven and Earth,
Are you to me."
She sings that to him where no one else can see. When he's feeling particularly tender, he shuts his eyes and sings the same words back to her.
Though she teases him that she'll sing it one day in public, he knows she won't. Even privately, the words embarrass him. He's sure he's not a single one of those things. But to hear Jessamine sing it, he can believe it's true.
The day he returns to District 12 by train, and Jessamine is there at the station, her black eyes wide as she stands behind his family, he can believe anything on earth.
The day that the Peacekeepers stop her singing and drag her by her black hair to their van, and shove her in, and drive away too fast for Haymitch to follow, is the day he stops believing in anything at all.
Part Three: My Partner
Haymitch wonders if Maysilee was religious.
She's sitting by the window of the train, tears streaming down her face as she watches the countryside soar by. Haymitch sits beside her. Their two fellow tributes, Sindeny and Juliet, are talking behind them, in some kind of emotional rush, but Haymitch does not have time for talking. And neither, it seems, does Maysilee.
She makes good company in that regard.
But eventually he hears little phrases slipping from her. Heavy, dark phrases, that belie her light, feathery curls and her staring blue eyes.
He hears her say, "In the pride of your power I will break you… and I will make for you the heavens as iron and the earth as bronze."
Such a simple phrase. He never thought to ask her where it came from, but he's heard about religion, and faith, something from before the Dark Days, a way of seeing things that are not there, and yet everywhere, at the same time, and he wonders.
The words survive when Maysilee doesn't.
The words are all he has left when he writhes on the floor of the arena, just steps away from the abyss, his stomach sliced open and his brain reduced to wishing, wishing, that he's right, and ringing the words
The pride of your power
In the pride of your power
In the pride of your power I
In the pride of your power I will break you
And somewhere, far away, there's trumpets.
Part Four: Maysilee's Niece
Haymitch doesn't notice the year that Madge Undersee turns twelve (too much alcohol), but he notices the year she turns thirteen. In the Reaping pen, she stands next to a girl with tightly braided black hair. They hold hands, and look straight ahead.
Just to see them like that reminds him of his own Reaping, where Maysilee and the first Madge and Emma clung together, holding hands, and wept, and wept.
And Haymitch, looking at the two little girls, who don't notice (although Emma Everdeen notices, and it fills her with fear to think of Haymitch mentoring her little Katniss, and her mind spins away from the current place, current time), Haymitch makes a promise, to Maysilee.
If Madge is Reaped, on that day, or on any day, he will move heaven and earth to bring her home.
Part Five: Sweetheart
Haymitch knows that Peeta, golden-haired, infinitely giving Peeta, is probably a better person.
But secretly, he likes Katniss best.
Katniss is like him. She thrives in the sunlight. She sinks into melancholy. She is harsh and prickly. She appreciates a good drink. But then again…
She always has strength to loan to others, and like his Mama she sits with Peeta's head on her knee and a book of stories (a gift from the Fishing Estate) on her lap.
She has a way of looking that tells him that her eyes see more than the ovens and the loaves of bread, like Maysilee looking out the window of that train.
And she sings. His heart grows lighter as she sings, and when her voice has just the right note of sweetness and joy, he can believe.
Part Six: Sparky
It's been a week already and the little thing hasn't even got a name yet.
It's not her fault, of course – Peeta wants to name her after someone they loved who's died, Katniss doesn't, she couldn't ever think of the baby as something apart from her namesake, and besides there's too many names from which to choose, unless they want to name her Primadgeruerose. Katniss' mother, who returned to the Coal Estate to deliver the baby, thinks they're all complicating this far too much. Johanna, who happened to be paying a visit, sits in the corner and laughs and laughs.
Haymitch? He just takes the baby (how he's so confident holding her is a mystery to him, he has a history of breaking things) when no one else wants to hold her– but she's already a popular little darlin', everyone wants to hold her – and Haymitch likes to think that it's because she's a tiny offshoot of Katniss, that holding her is like holding a baby fire in your hands. So his nickname for her is Sparky.
He keeps it a secret from the others.
When Sparky is unheld for a moment, he picks her up. When someone hands her off to him, he's fine with that. He sits in one of the unattended chairs, looks down at the squirming thing in his arms, all big eyes and fingers splayed like starfish, and he finds himself singing, in a low, rough voice,
"Younger than springtime are you,
Brighter than laughter are you,
Angel and Sparky, Heaven and Earth,
Are you to me."
ooooo
Author's Notes: The story that Haymitch's mother tells him is an adapted form of the myth of Chronos, from Greek mythology, aka Saturn, who ate all of his children alive because he didn't want them overthrowing him. That backfired.
What Jessamine sings to Haymitch is a scrap of song called "Younger than Springtime," from the musical South Pacific, miraculously preserved against the decline of civilization.
The quote that Maysilee utters cryptically is in fact from the Bible. Not sure which book, and it's slightly paraphrased.
The habit of renaming the districts 'the X Estate' is from the fanfictions of aimmyarrowshigh, go and read them, they're brilliant.