Spoilers: Major spoilers for Hunger Games
Disclaimer: The Hunger Games don't belong to me, and Haymitch was already broken when I borrowed him. I'm sorry that I don't put him back together here.
A/N: I can't really say where this came from, but Haymitch's character has always interested me, and I've thought a lot about what he might have experienced as a mentor. That would be such an impossibly difficult position to be in, escorting children to their deaths year after year. Words wouldn't really do it justice, and I wanted to explore that.
WARNING: This is a very dark fic, possibly the darkest fic I've ever written. It deals with quite a lot of death, and occasionally, there's the mention of Haymitch's suicidal thoughts. My beta, after reading it, even suggested I break it up into smaller pieces because she thought the snapshots might be too much at once. So, I want to make it clear up front: I'm very careful not to write in a graphic way, but this story explores some very heavy, very painful emotions and situations. Again, there is the mention of suicidal thoughts, so if you're sensitive to that, or sensitive to dark emotions, please have care before you read. I'd rather you didn't read it at all than be bothered by it. Thank you.
As always, I thank my Lord Jesus Christ for his incredible mercy and grace and his many blessings. I would be utterly lost without him.
Spectator
The 51st Hunger Games
If Haymitch learns anything during his first year as a mentor, it's that mentoring is a whole new form of torture.
He hadn't thought that was possible. He'd been sure that the Hunger Games and everything that followed had covered just about every kind of agony there was. He'd outlived forty-seven other teenagers, killed more than a handful of them himself, then gotten his family and his girl killed too.
After all that, how could he hate himself any more than he already does?
But this, this feeling of utter helplessness is a totally different kind of pain, and it cuts just as surely as the blade that gutted him in the arena.
They're going to die. Allen James and Marjorie Dunsford are going to die.
He knew that the second they were reaped.
Allen is sixteen, but he's so small that he looks a few years younger. Marjorie is fifteen. She's taller than Allen, but she looks like a strong breeze could blow her over too.
They're not strangers. They were his classmates once - it feels like a lifetime ago - and they're both from the Seam, like he is. Still, he's not friends with them. He only knows them in passing.
As it turns out, that's enough. That's plenty.
Because they're going to die.
Even if they stood a chance against the other tributes - and they don't - he knows without a shadow of a doubt that the Gamemakers will make sure they die horrible, ugly deaths, just because he's their mentor.
He's right.
That's exactly what they do.
And Haymitch? All he can do is watch.
The 52nd Hunger Games
Haymitch had dreaded these Games for a long time, because this year would have been his little brother's first reaping.
Of course, Aaron doesn't have to worry about the reaping now, and he never will.
He's dead.
That's not enough for the Capitol, though. No, the Capitol seems intent on making Haymitch pay, and pay, and pay, and it will probably never be enough. If they could, he's sure they'd bring Aaron back just so they could kill him again.
They can't do that, but Haymitch knows they can - and will - make these Games just as horrible as he feared they would be.
So, it's not really a surprise when the name Kernan Alsbey is called, and it's a twelve-year-old boy who bears a striking resemblance to Haymitch's dead little brother in all but one way.
Unlike his little brother, Kernan walks slowly, his hands out in front of him like he's afraid he'll bump into something. If the Peacekeepers weren't there to guide him up to the stage, he might not have found it.
He's not blind, Haymitch learns. Oh, no, he can see. He can see about two feet in front of him. After that, everything gets real blurry. Haymitch doesn't know exactly what the problem is with the kid's eyes, but he's pretty sure that the Capitol could fix it in a few minutes.
They don't.
The girl who's reaped, Emma Lee, she's from the Seam too and Haymitch knows her. She's eighteen, with three little brothers of her own, and she takes Kernan under her wing, guiding him around the penthouse and the training center patiently.
She dies on the first day of the Games, when she's trying to lead Kernan away from the bloodbath.
Kernan is easy prey after that.
The Careers make his death a sort of terrifying version of blind man's bluff, taunting him, and it's slow and bloody, and Haymitch knows he'll be seeing it over and over again in his nightmares for years to come.
And yet, somehow, in spite of that, he's grateful. He's grateful that if anyone had to die that way, it was Kernan Alsbey, not Aaron Abernathy.
It's that feeling, that sick gratitude, which eventually drives Haymitch out of the penthouse and down to the nearest bar for the first time in his life.
It won't be the last.
The 53rd Hunger Games
For the 53rd Games, Haymitch starts to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the Capitol is actually gonna to give him a break, because this year, his tributes are seventeen and eighteen, one from Town and the other from the Seam, and they both have potential. They're not the biggest tributes around, but they're both solid looking, and both of them are athletes.
He doesn't recognize the girl, Lissa Tolsen, but the boy, Cole Roberts, looks familiar, and it takes Haymitch a while to realize that he and Cole were in the same class, a long time ago (if it felt like a lifetime before, it feels like an eternity now).
Haymitch tries not to get his hopes up, but it's not easy, because his tributes keep showing promise. They actually get a few good remarks in the running commentary, their training scores are pretty decent, and there's even a moment where someone asks, "Could Twelve do it again this year?"
Eventually, Haymitch lets himself start to believe it.
It's a mistake.
Lissa has a run-in with a well-placed ax, and Cole gets ripped to pieces by a mutt so hideous that Haymitch can't even tell what it is.
He goes to collect their bodies for transport back to Twelve, and swears that he'll never let himself hope again.
Hope, for him, doesn't seem to do anything but hurt.
The 54th Hunger Games
By the time the 54th Games roll around, Haymitch has completely embraced the glorious benefits of alcohol.
It's funny, because his father drank himself to death, and Haymitch never thought he'd touch the stuff, but now, he finds himself reaching for a bottle more and more.
Maybe, if he's lucky, he'll drink himself to death too.
His escort makes some noise about him setting a bad example for the tributes, especially because he's technically not even of legal age yet. That makes him laugh, because his tributes are never going to reach the legal drinking age themselves, and he's pretty sure that if they actually managed to win the Games, they wouldn't want to reach it.
Haymitch doesn't.
His predictions are right, of course.
Ash Owens and Tess Butler both die in the bloodbath.
Haymitch just stares at the screen for a moment, then reaches for a bottle, telling himself it means nothing when his hands start to shake.
That gets harder when they refuse to stop.
TBC
A/N: This fic is already complete, and the snapshots reach all the way to the 74th Hunger Games, so updating should, Lord willing, be every few days or so. :)
Thanks for reading, and take care and God bless!
Ani-maniac494 :)
