1.
One morning he hears her singing the Hanging Tree song, her voice drifting up from outside on a cold autumn breeze. It is not the best singing voice in the world, certainly nowhere near as pretty as she thinks it is; but it is sweet and most of the notes and tune falls just about right and it makes him smile despite the hour.
Effie is a despicably early riser. She gave up trying to haul him out of bed with her long ago, and gave up lying around waiting for him not long after that. These days she just lets him wake up when he will – at least within reason. She takes the early hours of morning for herself, finding that she does in fact enjoy a little solitude when she knows it will not last. More often than not she comes back to bed to wake him later. She will sit beside him and poke him until he – quite literally – wakes up and smells the coffee. She makes amazing coffee actually, and he would even grudgingly admit to being a fan.
"The sage is finally growing," she says this morning, continuing on into a recital about the herb garden that he does not give nearly as much of a fuck about as he would like her to think. He's benign to it though, and smiles and nods, liking – though he never could have imagined this in a thousand years – the sound of her voice and the up and down waves of sound lapping against his ears.
"Did you –" he begins to ask, inevitably, cutting her off half way through telling him about the state of the tomatoes.
"No Haymitch," she cuts in, archly, neatly segueing off topic in the knowledge of hat he is going to ask "I did not feed your stinky geese. You know how I feel about those creatures".
He knows damn well. Just as he knows that she has fed the geese and let them out for the day. She pretends to hate them as she used to pretend to hate him, as she still does in fact; only nowadays, mercifully, she takes it out more on the geese than on him. He knows exactly how she feeds them too – at arm's length, more throwing the seed from a distance than sprinkling it.
"Of all the distasteful animals you could possibly have chosen –" she says and he grins at her and comes back with the same words to her whilst he tries to kiss her good morning and she pretends to find him as grim as his geese.
"I'm running next door," she announces – "And I hope to see you up and cleaning out the coop by the time I'm back with the bread".
Haymitch tries to suppress the urge to say yes dear in the most eye rolling, brow beaten manner. This time he fails and she steals the bedsheet on her way out in retribution, utterly deaf to his yells. Anyway, he knows he has plenty of time, she'll get talking with Katniss and he'll have already sorted out the geese and snuck in a drink or two by the time she gets back.
Not that he drinks nearly as much these days. After persistent fights, ranging from light quibbling to enormous Trinket- tantrums that always ended with her saying that this time she really was leaving for good – they have come to an arrangement; he has an allowance, grudgingly given to him under Effie's careful watch, and in return he sticks to it.
She is still singing the same song coming round the corner from next door. He looks up when he hears her and smiles. She would never have acknowledged in words that she had even really been actively involved in the rebellion; indeed she always insisted that she was on their side purely because her people were. Him, Katniss, Peeta; that was what she meant, they were the only people she had. But he hears the lie when he hears her sing, there is air and earth and water in her voice when she sings, the false chirping of the Capitol songbird all melted away. He could breathe her in, this Effie; she is the sky made human, reachable, touchable, solid – though sometimes he thinks, only just.
Because he can never quite forget how nearly he might have lost her, how easily everything she was could have been stripped away by the things they did. She is a wonder to him now, for simply being Effie. He even treasures the silliness that still remains because he sees it more as a strength than anything else.
She is not like anything or anyone, a creature of two worlds, he supposed. He had never imagined she could adopt the District into her being and still remain herself. But she has; she is District truth walking arm in arm with Capitol lies. She expresses it as she expresses everything; more or less in the way she looks. This morning she has her hair tied back – it would be simply if not for the ridiculous green thing she has tied it back with. He does not even know what that is. There are layers of lace peeking out from below the hem of what should have been a drab district dress, but she dyed it pink anyway, because he supposed the word drab would make her faint on the spot. He squints at her in the mellow autumn sunlight, wondering if her dress clashes dreadfully with the pink shawl or if, in some strange way, the combination actually works.
He supposes the fact that he is even giving this shit half a thought is proof that he has lived with her too long.
"Strange things," she announces to him, breaking off the song as she reaches him and speaking the words as though they were a news bulletin. "Have happened here, how stranger would it be – if we met at midnight in the hanging tree?"
She looks at him quizzically as though expecting a genuine answer. He shakes his head at her and wonders, not for the first time, if she went a little mad between districts and all the things that happened in them. If she did, he supposes it's as good a coping mechanism as any. But she hasn't, not really. She's just Effie. And though it's taken too long, he thinks he might finally have come to understand that this is one thing he can trust in all the world to stay the same and stay, if he dare think it and he does – his.
She gives him a smile, with a little laugh in it, and walks blithely off towards the kitchen, waving the loaf over her head, announcing in a trilling voice –
"Bread!"
_x_
Hello! I'm so sorry for the wait on this third instalment! I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it since I had no plot as such, just a vague selection of ideas – so I've decided that rather than try and create a plot it's going to be just that – a series of fragments, peeps into Hayffie's happy ever after! Second peep coming soon! :-)