Originally going to be for Starvation's April challenge. Slightly edited to not follow the prompt as much as when I started writing in April.
i'm not calling you a liar, just don't lie to me
i'm not calling you a thief, just don't steal from me
i'm not calling you a ghost, just stop haunting me
and I love you so much, I'm gonna let you kill me
— florence + the machine
SORRY! WE'RE CLOSED, reads the sign.
She slams the door just to hear the bell chime, loud. Something familiar. She hates the fact that she has to pass through the living room in the back to go upstairs, because she always instinctively looks at the screen of their TV. Where Haymitch Abernathy's face is plastered all of the time. He doesn't look very cheerful about winning, but then, she can't remember if he ever looked cheerful about anything.
Plastic wrapper crinkling surreptitiously in her fingers, she places a stolen candy on her tongue. The minty flavor is almost soothing.
"Well, Haymitch," begins Caesar Flickerman, dark green-tinted lenses making his irises look unnatural, "I think the most moving part of your Games for the audience was when your district partner died. I definitely shed a tear."
Something in her makes her freeze, wanting to hear what this boy who never knew her sister at all would say about her. She hovers in the doorway. Haymitch shrugs. "She was a good ally. The best," he adds. A charming grin. She wonders why he sounds so sincere, and why she's so disappointed.
"Maysilee?" Her father's voice makes her flinch, low and slurred. She notices the empty bottle in his hand and the liquor lacing his breath with something like disappointment in the back of her throat. His eyes are unfocused, and he pats the couch cushion next to him.
"No, Dad," she whispers. "Minnesota."
He seems not to have heard her, so she swallows, hard, and takes his hand. "We missed you," he says.
Caesar's voice continues, and Haymitch Abernathy tosses the audience another grin that seems like it must have taken a lot of effort. A dull ache begins in her head at the sound of laughter coming from the television, her mother lets out a quiet moan upstairs, and her fingers start to go numb in her father's. "I'm glad you came home, darling."
Her other hand clenches, crumpling the wrapper.
"I'm so glad too," she says.
Wes Undersee visits the next day. His eyes are blue and red and they annoy her because he's cried and she hasn't yet.
He sits down with her and her mother, her father conspicuously absent from their grief session. They make awkward small talk. Weather (hot), school (fine), his father (busy). Never the one topic they're all here for. She misses her sister as much as they do combined, probably.
She slices cherry pie. It's a gift from the baker. Their whole kitchen counter is covered in "gifts." They're really just nonverbal I'm sorrys, and all of it seems useless because it's the one time where no one in her family is relatively close to hungry.
The TV drones on, and something ridiculously overdramatic, like everything in the Capitol, is playing. Her mother forces a laugh absently, thinking it's meant to be comedy. Wes joins in, his laughter obviously forced as well. The sound of it grates on her nerves, and she eats a slice of pie to have something to concentrate on, methodically shoveling sweetness into her mouth.
She makes tea and forgets the sugar just so one of them can ask for it. Neither of them is selfish enough to, and it irritates her.
They talk about everyone except the girl that matters most. She swallows the too-hot tea—in all its bitter glory—just so she can pretend her tears are only from the burning in her throat.
Wes politely averts his eyes.
Sleeping feels impossible. Her bed is too big and empty, and the sheets are itchy against her bare legs. But when she does sink into sleep, she dreams of Maysilee.
She'd thought she would have nightmares, but the dreams are almost worse. She wakes up only to wish she was still asleep because at least then her sister isn't dead. Maysilee grins radiantly and laughs and says things like, don't hate Haymitch too much, okay? It was all my fault, youknowthat.
She finds she can't speak, can't argue that of course it wasn't, and then she realizes her mouth is full of thick, salty-sweet blood. She gags. Take care of Wes, says a pink bird with red feathers and Maysilee's voice. Her voice.
I don't want to, Minnesota thinks, as she drowns and feels feathers against her cheek.
A bird chirps insistently as she wakes up, the sun staining her eyelids. Maysilee's canary. The sound is like a knife directly into her brain, and she resists the urge to squeeze her eyes shut and cover her ears with her hands. For a vague, insane moment, it almost looks as if his feathers are candy-pink.
She doesn't realize it's the day they've all been dreading. She opens the back door to put out the trash and her foot collides with a plain white box. Five feet, six inches; it matches her height. Nailed shut. Her fingernails are bleeding when she's finally ripped the lid free, and she leans over a corpse and finally cries, just for her. A gold mockingjay is pinned roughly into her sister's sickly, blue-white skin.
She might as well be the naked girl in the coffin, but she isn't and she wonders why.
They finally tear her away, a bird clutched in her fingers. Nail back the lid. And a Seam boy is paid to bury her in coal-black dirt.
"Do you like them?" Wes asks, months later. It's Sunday and he's visiting, something that's become unfortunately routine over the past year.
He's holding out a bouquet, obviously from the florist's by the look of the perfectly-trimmed stems. Vividly pink flowers. He's so tactless, she thinks.
Of course she likes them, she insists.
He smiles. So maybe he watched the Games with her and maybe she dug her fingernails into his hand a few times too many, but she doesn't owe him anything. But Maysilee insists, so she forces more fake smiles and tries not to notice that he laughs at everything she says.
And Wes Undersee is her best customer. He buys so many sweets she's surprised his teeth aren't rotting.
Haymitch Abernathy visits the shop, too, infrequently, often drunk and scaring away her customers, and she blames survivor's guilt rather than any sweet tooth he might have. He mutters incoherent things while ignoring the coffee she gives him and she finds she can't believe the rumors that he killed his brother and mother and girlfriend because she can't get the image of him holding Maysilee's hand out of her head.
As well as the rumors he's rebelling against the Capitol. She's pretty sure you can't lead a revolution when you spend all your time either drinking or buying more liquor to drink.
But I don't hate him, she tells Maysilee. Her sister grins.
Of course you don't, silly.
Minnesota's eyelids turn into pink feathers before she can reply, and Maysilee reaches out, as if to touch them—
Darkness. Twisted blankets. She finds she bit her cheek, and now she can taste real blood on her tongue. Her head hurts, and she wishes she was still dreaming so she couldn't feel it, couldn't feel anything except what she knows is fake. But sometimes it takes a long time to convince herself that it is, because Maysilee looks so real, eyes bright like jewels and a smile that mirrors hers.
When she wakes up again, it's clearly afternoon already and she's silently berating that stupid canary for not being her alarm clock. But there's no cage on her dresser.
"I thought you'd understand, honey," her mother says, in that vague way of hers. "Briony has been so supportive, hasn't she?"
Minnesota swallows. It's always been like this. She never got a canary for her birthday. It was always Maysilee. Maysilee's canary goes to Maysilee's best friend. And she's just Maysilee's twin.
It feels wrong to hate someone who's dead.
She has a name, but she's wearing her sister's shoes and wig and face so why should they bother to remember it?
It's the reaping yet again—fifty-second—and her hands are literally shaking. And then she's utterly relieved when she isn't picked, seven years in a row. Because she couldn't have done all those simply wonderful things that Maysilee did. She couldn't survive like that.
You never know, Maysilee whispers.
Her dress is her sister's. They don't have enough money to buy anything new and she would have felt guilty if she had when there's a dozen creased ones in Maysilee's half of the armoire. But it still feels wrong, like she's the one who died and Maysilee is the one getting sunburned in her own wrinkled dress.
Wes grins wide as he walks her home, not by her choice. "So we survived getting reaped, huh?"
Minnesota doesn't answer, and he realizes why with a muttered apology.
"Did you love my sister?" she asks abruptly. It's an obvious question and he would be an idiot to respond with anything but yes. He stops walking and looks up at the robin's-egg-blue sky like it's spelling out the right answer.
"I did, I guess," he says finally. "But it has been two years, Minnesota. She's gone."
"'Time heals all wounds,' isn't it?" she says bitterly. Pain blossoms in her head, expectedly, and she still winces. She doesn't think time could ever make her miss Maysilee any less than she did the moment the train left.
"Well, it's different for you," Wes says, surprising her. They've reached the front door of her father's shop; even after two years in which she'd run the sweetshop herself, she still has a hard time thinking of it as hers. But her father doesn't own much of anything nowadays.
"Have a nice evening," he says.
She frowns. "Aren't you coming in?"
He gives a kind of hollow laugh. "I don't think you'd want me to be there, to be honest." The guilt that fills her is immediate and startling. She'd never thought he actually noticed that she couldn't care less about him for the past couple years, and she feels her cheeks flush. So much for taking care of him.
Wes coughs, looking slightly guilty. "You know, I was mostly hanging around because, well, Maysilee said something to me. When I said goodbye to her after the reaping," he explains, even though he hardly owes her an explanation. "She told me to take care of you. That you'd need it."
Minnesota swallows; she's a part overwhelmed, another part aching, and the last third irritated, because Maysilee still seems to be everywhere and sometimes she wants to beg you're gone, please leave me alone.
Don't hate Haymitch. Take care of Wes. You used to laugh so prettily, Minnie, why don't you do it more often? As if that wasn't obvious.
Wes is back to looking at the sky and she thinks it's at least better than looking at the ground; an unfairly pretty blue (even with a faint hint of grey) versus bricks all but covered in coal.
"Come inside," she says, unclenching her teeth against her headache. "I do want you here. Now, anyway. I mean," she adds quickly, her face burning, "if you want."
Inwardly, she thinks, who would?
But he holds open the door for her to go inside first, and she thinks she knows exactly what Maysilee saw in him now.
It's three short years since the Quarter Quell, and she kind of wishes they'd been longer.
Wes has gotten more tactful, or maybe she's just more lenient She lets herself laugh at his jokes because Maysilee insists, and now that she listens, they're actually not half bad. If her dreams don't feature Maysilee, then sometimes they're of him. Sometimes she feels guilty, and she tries remind herself that her sister can't be upset if she's dead.
It usually doesn't work, but Minnesota lives for Sunday afternoons anyway, when the bell jingles and she thinks not another customer and it actually isn't.
"You don't have to keep buying candy you're not going to eat," Minnesota says candidly, as he places a package of chocolate-covered berries in front of her. The thought of wasting all that food, however unhealthy, is a little sickening.
Wes raises his eyebrows. "How do you know I'm not eating them?"
She feels herself blush. "Your teeth. They're white."
He looks at her, a grin playing around the corners of his mouth. "Well, I didn't know you paid so much attention to what my teeth look like."
"I don't," she says irritably, and because he knows her better by now, he doesn't argue, just laughs.
"I'm buying all these for my little sister, by the way," he explains, as she rummages for change to avoid looking at him. Her cheeks burn brighter. She'd been a idiot to think he had been loitering all this time because he knew she's running out of money, because he cared."No offense or anything, but I don't really like candy," he adds, an afterthought.
She holds out his coins and manages a half smile. "Neither do I."
Wes grins that infectious smile back like he cares. Maybe he really does. He counts his change meticulously and she isn't offended like she used to be, because that's just a part of him and she knows that now, three years late. And her parents watch and smile bright.
Her sister used to smile with teeth, and you could always tell it was her because of the tiny chip in her front tooth.
But Maysilee isn't charming or even nice anymore, in her dreams. Or maybe they've always been nightmares. Maysilee laughs when the artificially-pink birds dig their beaks into her skin and the sun burns so bright she thinks she's going blind until her head aches so painfully she wakes up and reaches for her sister and touches cold sheets.
"I still dream about her all the time," Minnesota says, while they twist licorice into knots.
He's taken to helping her out with the shop, and eventually it ceases to make her feel embarrassed.
Nearly all the good memories she has of her twin have slipped away, replaced by nightmares of her shoving poisonous fruits into her mouth or cutting her with words and a curved beak.
Beside her, Wes stops, and she can feel his eyes on her.
"She...was a good person, wasn't she?"
"Of course," he replies, and when Minnesota sneaks a glance at him, his brows are furrowed. "She was definitely a good person."
She fixes her gaze back on her braid of licorice. "Do you think you could tell me a nice memory?"
Wes begins to speak, resuming his work, and occasionally Minnesota finds herself listening more to the smooth sound of his voice than to the story she asked for.
"I came for a drink," she says. Her headache is killing her, maybe literally, and she wants to run away, figuratively.
Haymitch Abernathy snorts. "I bet you've never had one in your life."
"So?" is her reply. He laughs at that, but she reaches for the bottle and he lets her. Minnesota takes one tentative sip that burns like acid all the way down and makes her feel worse. Her eyes water and he yanks the bottle away and downs it easily himself.
She can't see whatever her sister saw in a typical Seam boy that made her say, we'd live longer with the two of us.
"I heard you get headaches," Haymitch says suddenly.
"Sometimes," she lies. The taste of liquor is still stuck on her tongue. He gets up unsteadily and returns with a thin box in his hand. Syringes slide out into his fingers. "It's called morphling," he says flatly, shoving the needles back inside. Minnesota takes it from him slowly.
He returns to the couch, where the stiff cushions have caved in around the exact spot he slumps in. She doubts he ever moves very much.
"I'll never use it," Minnesota announces.
Haymitch laughs again. "You know, sweetheart, that's exactly what I said—" He pauses briefly to pour more liquor down his throat, "—about this."
"I won't," she says again, but she swallows and slides the tiny syringes into her coat pocket anyway.
Four years since.
She tries not to fall asleep and staying up all night with nothing but pain drilling into her head makes her (more) irritable. Especially when Wes visits. She finds herself making cutting remarks and wishing he'd say something cruel (and true) back, because she deserves it and he doesn't. So she voices this, wondering why he even comes back every single afternoon and still wastes his time trying to cheer her up.
"Minnesota," he says with exasperated blue eyes. "I promised your sister I'd take care of you, okay? And I'm going to."
"Just for Maysilee?" she asks unfairly, wanting him to say yes and knowing he won't.
"No," Wes replies. "I want you to be okay." He has the sweetest look on his face, and she surrenders, because it's hard to argue with someone when you can't think because you have a never-ending headache on account of your dead twin sister—who incidentally used to be the girlfriend of the person you were trying to argue with.
She kisses his cheek and tells him, thank you for caring.
When she accidentally falls asleep that night, the sound of Maysilee's derisive laughter feels real, like it could break her head open from the inside. You're not me, she says, too loud.You know Wes looks at you and sees me, don't you? They all do. You haven't worn a dress that isn't mine in weeks.
She can't answer her anymore, just listen. She always wakes up just when the words feel like they're coming up her throat, but Minnesota has no idea what they are.
Her back aches from sleeping on the sofa and her head aches worse.
As if sleepwalking, Minnesota finds a certain coat and digs a box out of its pocket. The syringes rattle against each other when she opens the box, her hands shaking. This is what's real, but she doesn't want it to feel that way.
Laughter rings in her ears.
Her arm feels oddly delicate. Blue veins run up to her elbow. The needle is razor thin and her fingers shake harder as she touches the glass plunger and the cylinder full of something transparent. Morphling, he'd called it. She flinches as she sticks the needle into her skin but presses the plunger down before she can consider it any more.
After a brief sting, nothing feels wonderful.
Only on rare occasions, she tells herself. And then the last syringe is in the trash and she's on Haymitch Abernathy's doorstep asking can you get me any more? He answers with a reluctant maybe and that's as good as a yes to her.
Two weeks later, he holds a stack of pale boxes and smirks. "Did you really think I'd give you these for free? It isn't easy to get, sweetheart."
Minnesota scowls. "You know I don't have any money—"
"Well, I don't want money," Haymitch says. "I have more money than I want." For the first time he actually drinks from the mug of coffee she forces into his fingers. "Tell me about your sister."
Of course. But she does, because he seems sober and he's holding what's practically her lifesaver.
The bags under her eyes are slowly disappearing. Wes tells her she looks better, almost suspiciously. Minnesota laughs and affectionately teases that it's thanks to him, of course. She finds there's something to look forward to, a kind of paradise when the needle pricks her skin and the drug makes everything go away.
And on one morning when she hears Wes' father is seriously sick, she doesn't hesitate.
Briony lives in the Seam now. She hides her blond hair under a hat of her father's and tries not to cringe as she walks through the dirty streets.
"It's been a long time, hasn't it?" her old best friend says finally, in the doorway of a tiny shack. Her hair is duller than she remembers, and she's noticeably thin, but she looks disproportionately happy.
Minnesota skips any greetings even through it's been years, and starts telling her about his father's sickness.
Briony shakes her head and interrupts, "I can't do anything for him, Minnie, only a Capitol doctor could. I'm sorry. But I—I've missed you; why don't you come inside—?" The last part is tentative, and Briony colors a little as she looks at her home. She must really love that coal miner to run away to this: starvation, a tangle of blackened ruins, and the ceiling tinted with a permanent grey.
"No, thank you," Minnesota says quickly. It might be vain but she doesn't think she can stand another second with coal dust filling her lungs. She hesitates before asking, "My sister's canary—?"
Briony swallows, looking away, and that's her answer. Her head aches with full vigor for the first time in weeks, and she isn't quite sure if she'd bothered with a thank you before walking away. But she isn't grateful, frankly, so it doesn't matter.
She knows that she should go to him and let him squeeze her fingers too tightly, the opposite of almost six years ago, but she doesn't; she can't.
She goes home and curls up on the cushions with Capitol accents whispering in her ears.
She walks reluctantly up to the biggest house in the District (besides the ones in Victor's Village) the next morning. Wes opens the door with wet eyelashes and she hugs him because it's obviously already too late. There's a dead body upstairs and Minnesota thinks—without any satisfaction—that maybe he understands a little better about Maysilee.
"I'm sorry," is the one brilliant thing she can think of saying.
"Not your fault," he answers quietly. She realizes detachedly that he's now the mayor of District 12.
Minnesota makes him tea in his own kitchen, with sugar. Her headache swells suddenly, and she thinks she's lucky she slipped a needle in the pocket of her dress, just in case. She pours the drug into her veins easily now. And Wes chooses the moment to enter the kitchen.
He looks at the empty syringe in her fingers jadedly, as if he's seen so much that he can't possibly be surprised at this.
"You'll kill yourself."
"Slowly," she says, and pours the tea.
It's almost anticlimactic when they sit on the sofa and she touches his cheek and he kisses her. He tastes like bergamot and she does too, because there's nothing but soaked sachets left in their china cups.
In May, she puts on a crisp new skirt and they split a piece of thick toast spread with butter and honey.
Fin.