Hey guys, I'm trying out something a little different here. Usually my fics are over a definite period of days or series of moments, but this one transposes the entire series. I just love second person and unrequited love a lot (like, a lot a lot) and started to have too much fun with this.
I took a few liberties with the plot, changed some stuff, stretched the truth. Not everything is 100% canon.
Thanks for reading, and don't hesitate to tell me what you thought!
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There is a Portuguese word, saudade. It has been defined as a "vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist."
It is not translatable into English. You do not know any other languages. You knew a man from the Capitol once who was fluent in three. You do not know if Portuguese was one of them. You do not know him anymore.
.
It is Reaping Day and you are (no shit) drunk.
You barely acknowledge the fact that she volunteered—that District 12 had a volunteer—because at the moment, you're too hammered to acknowledge anything, really. You fall off the stage after the other victor has been called (What's his name? Peter?) and don't think anything else of the girl with sunburned cheeks and a dark braid wrapping around her shoulders.
.
You think more about the boy (Peeta?) when he cleans you up on the train after you drink enough to puke up your guts and pass out. She is still relatively unexceptional—that is, until she almost stabs you in the hand with a knife and you decide that maybe these kids have a chance after all. That between the two of them, maybe you have finally gotten a tribute who will stay with you, instead of dying like everyone else in your life.
You ponder her surprising agility with knives and your mind tricks you into thinking (briefly, very briefly, because you do not have to see Maysilee's tan skin anymore or your intestines spilling out of your abdomen or the forcefield and that axe) of yourself so many years ago.
"Well, what's this? Did I actually get a pair of fighters this year?"
They stare at you with a relentless determination. For possibly the first time in your life, or the first time you still remember, you are proud.
.
With his camouflage skills and subtly, you know the boy will be able to hide from other tributes easily in the arena. But it is the girl, it is Katniss, who will shine. She has spunk, a drive that you have never seen before, a blaze in her eyes that Cinna's clothing could never replicate. Even before they decided to set her aflame, she was always the Girl on Fire.
You clutch your knife closely to you on the last night. You try not to think about her, shaking in her bedroom—maybe she's crying, maybe she doesn't feel anything at all—and you know you want to do something, anything, but you don't. Instead, you drink.
.
When they first leave for the arena, your decision has already been made. You think that possibly, your decision had been made from the start—from the moment you saw her with that knife in her hand and could not shake the memory of your own games.
You chose her. Deep down, bless the bread boy's fucking soul, it could never have been anyone but her.
.
You hold your breath when you see her position herself on the platform, feet angled towards the Cornucopia, not towards the woods. You do not breathe for the first couple minutes.
When the knife lodges in her backpack, you do not know whether to be incredibly angry or incredibly proud. All you can see is yourself. But for one brief second, one quick moment, you see your girl, her dark hair all gathered in a braid, strung up by Snow beside your brother. Like lovers.
.
It puts you on edge, these Games. Every goddamn year. But this year, it's something different; you drink less, worry more. Chaff regularly checks on you to find papers and plans and spreadsheets strewn across your suite, graphite and ink stained on the tips of your fingers.
"Haymitch." You do not look when he enters the suite. His voice is, for once, level. Serious. "I have never seen you like this. Are you okay?"
He holds a bottle in his hands. You can hear liquid swishing. You do not look. He takes a sip. You do not look. You do not speak. Eventually, he leaves.
You continue working. Thinking.
When you remember yourself at sixteen, just as headstrong and jaded as she is, you figure it out. Instead of doing the same thing every year, thinking like the tributes in order to save the tributes, this time, you just might have to think like yourself.
On the big screen, she kisses him on impulse. You send soup and she catches on immediately.
So you withhold some gifts. Censor some notes. She's smart, and you can work with that. You want to be surprised; you don't want to have hope, because hope kills things. You don't want to break yourself further. Just because you were clever enough to win does not mean she will be.
It does not, you repeat.
It does not. It does not.
.
When they both get out of the arena, all berry-stained fingers and blood, you pick back up your bottle.
.
That night, while the boy is unconscious and she is under careful watch of Capitol doctors, you sleep. And for the first time since your Quell, you dream not of the dead.
You are in one of 12's coal mines. An explosion is about to happen, you can feel it, but you cannot quit mining, cannot quit breaking away at the cave walls until it is her that you uncover, covered in black and sputtering, coughing, but you just grab her and run. When you wake up, all you can hear is ringing. The mine is still exploding at your heels.
.
When you finally see her, at the end of an infinitely long hallway, she runs and runs and runs and launches herself at you before anyone else. And you fight off tears of relief, pride, fear.
You imagine the worst possibilities for her so you will not be surprised. Lecherous old men bidding on her at prices Snow cannot resist. Her entire family killed. Peeta slowly succumbing to infection, no coincidence that the antibiotics the doctors give him do not work.
You hug her for longer than is necessary, and for once in your life, you are damn glad you're sober, so you can take in all the sensory stimuli you are met with before she pulls away.
Remember, you think, before you can tell yourself not to, the way she feels in your arms. The smell of earth in her hair. Her foggy breath on your neck.
You do not know when, or if, you will ever be met with these senses again.
.
For a long time, you do not speak.
Finally: "No. Absolutely not." In this moment, you are as ruthless as you were at sixteen, bright-eyed and dangerous, armed with a knife and an insatiable bloodlust for the Capitol.
You stand in front of the Gamemakers, and they are angry—pissed-the-fuck-off, in fact—but you don't care.
"This isn't your decision, Abernathy," Seneca Crane hisses, but it does not phase you. You know what this will lead to, permanently, surgically altering her. You cannot let that happen. You told yourself you would not be surprised, and you are not, but lack of surprise does not equal lack of fight.
You will not let them turn her into Finnick. Into yourself. Into more of yourself than she already is. You pray she never picks up a bottle. You pray she never becomes dependent on the feeling of glass between her teeth.
"I'll be damned—" you spit at his feet, "—if I let you do to her what you bastards did to me."
Crane smiles like blood drips from his gums. He wishes. "Oh, Haymitch," he purrs, "We didn't have to do anything to you, you were just perfect…" You want to die. You ball your fingers into fists. "She, however, is greatly lacking. Guess her little tits match her personality, and we can at least make them a tiny bit more perky, raise the prices—"
You're a goddamn idiot, and you punch him. You're a goddamn idiot, and chaos ensues, and you cannot feel anything anymore, and you punch him. And you don't even try to tell yourself not to: all you can think about is her.
.
Swans mate for life. But in the event of a death, another may step in to replace the lost half after a period of grieving.
You have had twenty-three years of grieving.
Humans are the only animals that willingly spend life alone. You do not think about this for very long.
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Something breaks in you during the Victory Tour. (Later, you realize it had probably been a long time coming. Or something.)
You bear witness to her steady unraveling, and as you coach her on how to make the Capitol believe—how to make everyone believe—in the Star-Crossed Lovers, you develop a pang in your chest, somewhere deep and dark and dusty from disuse, that wishes, against all morality, that Peeta had not also come out of the Games.
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District 11 rolls around and she speaks with words like embers, as if anyone expected anything less from the Girl on Fire, three fingers like matches in the air as she concludes.
She gets herself into trouble in almost every District. She has a way of doing these things, you know. It does not scare you any less each time it happens.
You do not think twice before stepping in front of the Peacekeeper's gun for her. You step in front of the whip for her. It is later when you finally understand why you have never committed suicide all these years under the Capitol's thumb.
When you die, you want it to be for love. When you die now, you want it to be for her.
Silently, you wonder how different those two wishes are.
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It is a year after The Beginning and the 75th Quell has just been announced and between flashbacks of your own Quell you realize with an unsurprising somberness that you are choosing her again. God help you, you lying bastard, you are choosing her again, and she will never forgive you, and you do not regret it, and you will never forgive yourself.
.
When Hades, the god of the underworld, took Persephone to be his bride against her will, she was gathering flowers on a plain. She scattered blossoms everywhere in her wake.
You wonder if those blossoms bloomed into roses. If it snowed when Demeter, the goddess of harvest, searched for her daughter.
.
You are not drunk when she barges into your house, hours after the announcement. You are intentionally notdrunk (the only way, of course, the only reason you're not passed out), because you were expecting this.
"There she is. All tuckered out. Finally did the math, did you, sweetheart? Worked out you won't be going in alone? And now you're here to ask me… what?"
She stumbles over to the chair where you're sitting, face puffy, but she is beautiful, and you are damned to hell.
"I came here for a drink," she says, and you start. Visions of yourself, washed up and pitiful, dependent on your bottle, flood your mind.
But who are you—who have you ever been—to deny her. You hesitantly hand her the glass of whiskey closest to you, and she accepts, throwing it back in one shot before coughing violently like an old smoker. So violently, (you tell yourself), that it demands your immediate attention; you shoot up from your chair and place a steady hand on your back.
"Whoa, tiger…" you murmur, moving her, still coughing so hard she is shuddering, to sit. She grabs the bottle you had been pouring from earlier and empties it into her glass, masochistically downing it. You never feel it this bad anymore, but you still remember the raw burn of your first time. Her cough grows significantly wetter.
You take the glass out of her hand, put it out of reach on the floor. "Easy there, sweetheart. Take it slow." She sits there for a while, hacking up her lungs on your chair, before the panic sets in all over again.
Cough subsiding, she's crying again, and it crescendos into hysterics, hiccups and all, and you can only stand beside the chair and cradle her head to your chest, stroking her hair. "Nothing is going to happen to you, sweetheart. Not while I'm still around." You wield the nickname into a term of endearment instead of sarcasm. Goddammit, you are soft. And pathetic. But slowly, she stops shaking, presses her face into you and reaches up to grab hold of your arms around her head.
"That's not what I'm afraid of," she whimpers, and you sigh. Because this is what you were afraid of. And you cannot deny her anything, almost anything, except for this.
She asks you to keep Peeta alive and you won't, you can't, not when she looks at you like you are actually worth more than just keeping Ripper in business, not when her hair is loose from its braid and she is drunk from two glasses and the darkness reflects in her eyes, not when she holds onto your arms and cries and says, "Please, Haymitch, please."
You won't, but you tell her okay, and it breaks your heart to lie to her, but her tears dry up and she just looks hollow, curled into a fetal ball in your neglected den. And you can offer her this, this little glimmer of hope. You imagine somewhere deep inside, she knows you're not telling the truth.
She obviously knows something she is not willing to admit sober, because after she has calmed and you notice a distinct glassy-eyed look on her face you have seen in the mirror far too many times, she moves from the chair to sit beside you on the couch.
You remain silent when she brings her hand up to your face—but you still are not drunk, and you cannot handle this sober—and rubs her thumb across your jaw. "You look at me sometimes," she starts, and you tense up, not wanting to hear this, because she is drunk enough to throw these kinds of words around, but not to forget everything tomorrow morning. "It's so different…"
You interrupt her. "I should get you some bread, sweetheart—" The name falls again into a tone of mockery, but your heart isn't in it. "It'll dry up that bitter pond that's somehow made its way into your stomach."
When you move to stand, her hand grips your cheek hard. "Haymitch," she breathes, and you sit back down. "You don't look at me like Peeta and Gale." Pause. "They're always expecting something from me. I don't like the way they look at me." You try your best, but you let your eyes flutter closed for just a second, just a moment, because she is beautiful, and you are so, so damned.
When you open your eyes, you have moved a hand to her waist, and here you both are, tangled in the weeds, tangled in each other and you are sober and she is drunk and you will not do this to her. To yourself.
She speaks again, and you are shooting yourself in the kneecap just to pull your hand away. Hers remains, pressed to your stubble. "I like the way that you look at me. Like I'm a real person, not a tool. Even when you forced me to act like I was in love with Peeta, it wasn't to help you, it was to help me."
It is then that you see what the Capitol has done to her. What Peeta, the poor kid, has done to her. What the rebels have done her her. Johanna had already called you to discuss preliminary plans for the next Games, and you know the position Katniss will be in at the end of them. The call had ended with a very clear command: Just get the goddamn Mockingjay out, okay? Jesus Christ, Haymitch.
She never wanted to be the Girl on Fire. She never wanted to be in love. She never wanted to be a symbol for the eventual destruction of everything she had ever known.
When she throws herself into your arms and settles into your lap, she isn't sobbing, not like before, but you can feel wetness against your neck and the pieces click in your head and she is kissing you, right at the hollow of your throat, twice, and then buries her head in your chest.
When she falls asleep, you take her upstairs and tuck her into your bed. As you leave, your eyes do not linger on her face. On her black hair, splayed out over your sheets.
You take a spare pillow downstairs, lie awake on the couch, and do not think about anything for the rest of the night.
.
An elephant's heart can weigh up to fifty pounds.
You want to carry it. Cupped in your hands. Instead of your burden. Instead of your bottle.
.
You're running on exactly 32 minutes of sleep. And restless, at that.
The pool of possible tributes is significantly smaller this Reaping Day. You see Effie's hand shake as she fishes around the jar for the girl's name to be reaped, and she can't seem to catch the only slip of paper inside.
When she moves to the boy's jar, your entire body tenses, and all you can see is Katniss on stage but she won't look at you. Won't look at anyone. She is frozen, eyes trained on her feet.
When Effie draws the name, her face constricts and she takes a deep breath before saying, "Haymitch Abernathy." The entirety of your last name is barely out of her mouth before Peeta is shouting.
"I volunteer!"
You know he just wants to keep her safe. You know this. And you really, desperately do not want to be back in the arena, but you want to be with her.
Your head hurts.
A minute later, Peeta stands on the stage with Katniss and grabs her hand, and all you can think of is the way she looked lying in your bed, moonlight coming in through the window, spilling all over her.
.
They are practically inseparable during training. An Avox leaks to you that they have been biding time watching old videos of the Games. You can catch the hidden meaning in what he has written: they know about the second Quarter Quell.
This does not bother you like you expected it to.
Anyway, you don't have much time to think about it before Caesar's interviews start, and you see her right before she is about to go on—next to last, of course—and for a fraction of a second, half of a beat, your heart stops. Because in white, she is the closest thing to Heaven you think you'll ever see.
You never did see the wedding dress photoshoot. You have not seen this dress at all, in fact, feigning disinterest to keep up appearances. God help you now, because you are gaping at her for the better part of a minute before she coughs awkwardly and your vision readjusts, both of you blushing, and she smiles at you and it doesn't reach her eyes, but you'll take it. So you wrap an hand around her head, press your lips to her temple, and murmur, "Break a leg, sweetheart," into her hair.
You see her for the last time immediately following Peeta's interview, and you know that after your goodbye, they will sleep one last night and then it will be time.
When you only half-joke with them to "stay alive" and give them each a hug, she has this pained look on her face and you communicate with her in your secret way for the first time since 74.
I know, sweetheart, you tell her, and she just looks back at you.
Thank you. You do not deserve her thanks, but you give her a curt nod anyway and send them off before the confused look on bread boy's face deepens. Right as they are about to walk out the door, however, you catch her.
"Katniss, in the arena…" you say, out loud this time. She just looks confused. "You just remember who the enemy is. That's all."
She purses her lips and exhales deeply, bows her head, walks out the door.
.
You do not expect to sleep tonight. And while you do not want to spend this time drunk, you do want to numb the itching in your chest. What better way, you think, than with a little fire.
The suit you were forced into for tonight is slowly suffocating you, so it lands in a heap on your bathroom floor as soon as you get back to your chambers. You don a black V-neck and ratty plaid pajama pants, fashion be damned.
Your embellished Capitol glass is just the right size for four fingers of whiskey, and that is all you allow yourself when you first get back to your room. Stretching out on the couch, you down your drink and stare at the suite ceiling, preparing yourself for a waiting game until morning, thinking back to the last time you lied awake on a couch for an entire night.
She will ruin you, you think, and dark laughter erupts in the back of your mind when you realize, you goddamn fool, that she already has.
An hour passes like molasses before you hear a noise at the door, three hesitant knocks. Footsteps shuffling back and forth, to your threshold and then away, unsure. Slightly buzzed, you wonder what in the hellEffie wants at this hour and open the door ready to tell her to fuck off.
The words die in your mouth when you see Katniss frozen there, pajamas all askew, hair mused like she'd been running her hands frantically through it for the past month. Face pink and swollen like the last time she had come to see you at night, the last time you had ended up awake on a couch.
Her arms are crossed over her chest protectively, and she curls into herself when she speaks. "Peeta is asleep," she says, won't meet your eyes. You know she's been drinking—probably raided the kitchen for any liquor you don't have already stashed in your room. She smells, you note, like you.
When she finally looks up, you reach out to her slightly and she inches forward, says, "I don't want to die, Haymitch," and collapses with a sob into your arms.
You hold onto her tight and quick. "Okay, okay—alright, sweetheart, okay…" You coo, dragging her to the couch. She beats her fists against your chest and pulls away and you let her.
"I just want to sleep," she gulps, stumbling to your bed. She crawls on top of it and collapses on your pillows without getting between the bedding, and again, who are you to deny her, so you tread over and gently lift her rigid form up enough to cover her with your comforter.
Sniffing, she grabs your wrist just as you are about to walk away, looks up at you with these huge eyes and you are seventy-one years old and she is eleven. You cannot look at her.
"Sweetheart…" You whisper, and it's as much of a beg as the way she is looking at you.
She doesn't cave. "Haymitch." Sniff. "Please." She is lying in the near middle of the king-sized bed, and there is just enough room on your side, you estimate, to get in and manage to not touch her. Because you cannot stand to hear her plead, because you are a weak man, because the alignment of the stars on exactly this night at exactly this time decided to find her in your room, you slip between the covers. On your side, facing her, on her side, facing you.
You fix your eyes somewhere beyond her, not ready to focus in on her face. Not ready to see it riddled with raw emotion, however misplaced that emotion may be.
You are not fooling yourself. You know she is not here for you specifically. She is just here for someone, for not-Peeta, because damn if the boy does not smother her with worry sometimes.
She reaches across no-man's land to you, arms like rivers and pebble fingertips brushing your own. "Look at me," she says, and you do. Her eyes are puffy, but she smiles, just slightly. "There it is," she breathes. Curls her fingers around yours. "I came to you, you know. It wasn't exactly convenient." Her words are the same as daytime-Katniss', but the way in which she speaks them is hesitant, indifferent. For the first time, you notice the only windows in your room are on the wall not facing the moon.
"I know," you say, voice rough, but you don't. And as usual, your buzz is not nearly enough to handle this.
She is still holding your hand. "Please, Haymitch. Keep looking at me like that, like you do…" She starts crying again, silently, and screws up her face, ducks her head. And all you can think is she knows, Jesus fuck, she knows. Regardless, string loops around both of your figures, already bent together, and pulls you closer.
You wind an arm around her back, stretch another underneath her head. Her shaking form presses flush to you, slips a leg between your knees. Your chin rests atop her crown, nose pressed to her hair, no braid, smelling like lemongrass and wood.
Coins of moisture land on your skin along the deep V of your shirt and she is kissing you again, and your heart breaks. She is kissing you, and an icepick lodges in your stomach, and you cannot pull it out, and you must find a way to breathe around it. And she is kissing you.
And you know this isn't what she feels for you, you know this isn't what she will want when the war is over, but you are okay with that, you will be okay. You will be okay.
"I don't want to die," she murmurs between sobs, between mindless pecks on your chest.
You obviously left your filter with that bottle of whiskey you oh-so-smartly decided not to drown yourself in tonight. You nuzzle her hair, and the words come out before you even have time to think. "Then come back to me."
.
Butterflies cannot get all of their necessary sodium from flowers. To supplement this, they also feed on rotting fruit and animal excrement. If the opportunity presents itself, a butterfly can even get its sodium intake from decaying corpses.
Your arena was filled with butterflies. After the bloodbath, when you were alone in the woods, one landed on your shoulder. You could not get them to leave you alone for the rest of the Games.
.
You trust Johanna fully, no doubt. And Finnick. Beetee. Wiress. But that doesn't calm your nerves as you watch the rebels' elaborate plan unfold from your suite in the Capitol.
For the past twenty-four hours, you have barely been rational enough to communicate with Katniss the way you did last year. But you know when you send her the spile, she will understand. And she does. You expected nothing less.
Watching them makes you tremble with worry. You need a drink, two drinks, eight, in your hands constantly. Instead, Effie's shaking form brings you water.
The plan is in full swing before you have time to choke on your guilt. What a wonderful thing. When you see her begin to wrap the wire around her arrow, you hold your breath. You do not breathe again until she does, in person, right in front of you.
.
When she lunges at you, out for blood, nails poised for attack, you let her. You let her, because you are hollow, stuffed with bitter drink and bitter selfishness, and you did not do this for Panem, you did not do this for the revolution—if killing Peeta meant saving her, you would do it again in a heartbeat. Over and over and over, until the seas dry up, until the moon falls, until you stop feeling that pang in your chest every time she sighs.
.
A couple nights later finds you asleep in a bunker in District 13. Asleep, or the closest thing to it, when your little room's door opens and she steps inside, sleep shirt rumpled. She looks exhausted, like she hasn't slept for days.
When she begins to pad to your cot, you are fully awake, moving to sit up against the stone wall behind you. She wordlessly stands beside you for a second, two, before pushing you over in the small bed with her knee and slipping between the stale sheets, curling into you. Her body is small and bony, even though she had plenty to eat in District 12 and the Capitol if she had wanted it.
You can fit one arm all the way around her waist when she is laying on her side, and God is going to smite you because you definitely should notknow that.
(You think also, you should not know the sound an axe makes when it lodges in human bone. The taste of a twenty-third shot of vodka in a row.)
But still, she reaches up and touches your face, red train tracks where she scratched you, and you close your eyes and you are still damned to hell. Whatever. You already were, anyway.
For a while, the only sound either of you makes is an airy whoosh-ahh like the ocean lives between each of your lips. When she buries words into your chest, however, it is with the strength of a puddle ripple instead of waves.
"Well, I did it," she murmurs, sounding ironically defeated. "I came back to you." Your arms narrow around her as your heart falls to your gut. She came back to you, and at what price. You can hear in her voice that she will never forgive herself, never forgive you.
"I'm so sorry, sweetheart," you breathe into her hair, and her body racks once with a sob before she raises her head to meet your eyes.
She blinks back tears. Twice. "I am, too." And if you know anything about your relationship with Katniss, it is that she does not tell you things she does not mean. Simply put, she doesn't care enough about you to lie. And if that's all you get, you don't mind.
So tentatively she places her lips at your hairline, crowning you with her little kiss-droplets. Soon, moisture builds up on your forehead and drips down, you can't think straight about anything, and why are her kisses so cold—
When you blink, there's a pillow between your arms and you are sweating, thick beads down your forehead and neck and back, saliva caught in your throat, hands and legs and vision shaking so violently it feels like tiny bombs are going off in your veins.
Right, of course. Alcohol withdrawals are a bitch, after all. And if this is the only way you can see her right now, so be it.
You've been hallucinating for a couple days now, not just about her. Of course not. You had one with Effie in it, too, you remember, maybe, even if it was just her fist, knocking at the door, her shrill voice outside it yelling at you to shut up. Wait—maybe that one was real.
This recent delusion is the most vivid, however, and it breaks your heart in every way to realize how intangible it truly is.
You have heard that she finally agreed to (officially) become the Mockingjay. Blood constantly pounds in your ears. Because this, more than her berry-coated suicide stunt, more than her matchbook hands, more than the two nights she spent in your bed—this puts her at risk. And you cannot, goddammit, lose anyone else. Not now. Not her. Especially not her.
Your fear is realized when she reunites with Peeta. At first, the look on her face is pure relief, the exact same relief you felt at seeing her in that hospital bed after the Quell explosion.
It is in this moment, the way she is looking at him like he is the moon she is comet, that you realize you will spend the rest of your life making her happy, even just from afar. And you are okay with that, as long as whatever higher power is in charge lets you see her eyes light up like they are now every once in a while.
She moves to him and he to her, but a knot forms in your stomach when you see his smile. Because all too soon, Peeta's face is contorted with rage, his hands are around her neck and she is choking on air and you cannot move, you are completely frozen, all the thinking on your feet you have done but you do not know, don't understand, and suddenly Boggs punches Peeta unconscious and Katniss spills into your arms, and you cling to her, and she clings to you, and nothing moves, and everyone holds their breath.
.
The deepest known cave in the world cuts over seven thousand feet into the earth. The only way in is by rappelling. The only way out is by someone else pulling you up.
There is a reason cave explorers work in pairs. The deepest points of existence cannot be found alone.
.
The entire time she is in District 2, you quake with worry. The withdrawals are over but your hands still shake, and if Plutarch notices during your daily meetings, he says nothing. For the most part, you stay quiet, up until you are watching the TV and there she is, staring down the barrel of a gun. No one is in front of her. No one is helping her. And when she is shot and starts bleeding into the earth of District 2, you feel like you are the one carrying the bullet. You barrel into command in a rage.
"Haymitch," Plutarch reasons. "She is coming here immediately. We are pulling her out."
You fume. "She was fucking shot, goddammit! She should already be here. She should have never left." You're speaking in anger and you know it, you're beyond reason, but to hell with reason. If she needed to leave District 13 to get away from Peeta, she should have just stayed out of the fucking psych ward. Jesus.
By the time she gets back, asleep in a hospital bed after surgery, the only thing you want to do is curl up beside her, take her face in your hands, kiss her awake and at every point of pain, there and there and there, until she can't feel the bruises and stitches anymore, only the ghost of your lips.
You don't, of course. You wonder when it became this bad, when you fell so far that you lost sight of the way out.
Logic's grip on you is strong, but that doesn't stop you from living off of crackers and water in a chair by her bed for the three days she is unconscious. Gale stays as much as he can, but Coin always drags him out. Her mother does not show up at all. In the end, you are the only one who stays.
On the second day of your camping out in Katniss' hospital room, Plutarch brings you a blanket and a novel. "Figured you'd need a way to bide the time," he says, and you thank him with a curt nod.
"What are the doctors saying?" you ask him.
Plutarch shrugs. "Well, you know the surgery went well. She should wake up in the next couple of days." There is a pause.
"Why hasn't Coin called me out to—" Plutarch purses his lips and shakes his head.
"Don't do that. You stay here. After your reaction when she first went down, I don't think anyone wants you in the command room until she is in the clear." You silently agree.
He leaves with a clap on your shoulder. "Coin keeps saying a martyr could end the war. But for your sake, I hope it doesn't have to be her."
You don't pick up the book. Instead, for the rest of the night, you stare at your hands.
She leaves again a month later. By then, you have memorized every line in your palms.
.
Before the Dark Days, before actual medicine, people used to believe the act of "bleeding" would rid sick bodies of disease. Doctors would either cover patients in leeches or cut slits up their arms to get the bad blood out of their bodies.
District 12 is too dry for leeches to live. One time, you took a knife to your own skin, but you bandaged up your arms before too much blood could seep out.
You don't think you'll try again. There's too much bad blood in you anyway—you're filled with it. You'd have to bleed yourself dry to get it all out.
.
It's four in the morning and you've been asleep for exactly two hours when you hear a pounding on your door, Plutarch on the outside shouting, "Haymitch, wake up! Haymitch!"
You unlock the door and open it, yawning. Before those two hours of shut eye you'd just gotten, you'd been awake for almost forty-eight hours straight, watching the Capitol feed.
You left the command center with a direct order for Plutarch to wake you up if anything happened. God, sure you're in a war and all, but what the hell could have happened just two hours after—Oh.
Plutarch's eyes are completely bloodshot, looking worse than you have ever seen him. Still, his face is cold and calculated, placid.
Similarly, emotion is not your forte, but something is swelling in your chest in a way that makes it hard to breathe. In times like these of desperation, you turn to what you know best: inappropriate sarcasm. "Jesus, Plutarch, who died?" You're kidding (kind of), but when he remains silent, just keeps staring at you, a part of you already knows what he's going to say.
"Haymitch…" he starts, but he can't seem to get the rest out. The thoughts in the back of your mind surface.
You grow serious immediately. Your vision swims. "No," you breathe. Your knees buckle.
Plutarch already has his hands under your arms when you fall. He drags you to the cot in your room, repeating, "Alright, alright, alright," as you hyperventilate. As you break down. Rip yourself apart with every scream that courses through your body.
The next thing you know, Plutarch is gone and she is gone and everything that kept you going in this godforsaken world is gone and you are alone in a way you haven't been since before 74. Since you watched birds' beaks peck out the eyes of a girl you swore to protect. Since you came home to a district with dead trees in all the places you called home.
For a fleeting moment, you hold onto hope that she survived, that it was a misunderstanding, a fluke. When you storm into the command center and demand footage, the pity written in every line on your colleagues' faces makes you want to knife them all in the neck, but they give you the recording wordlessly and let you watch it on the screen. All hope vanishes when you see the explosion.
Not for the first time, but definitely for the worst time, your hands itch for a drink. The pity lines deepen.
.
Time restarts when you get to the Capitol, right after the bombing. Relief and guilt weigh equally in your heart, because she is alive, thank God, but she will not want to be alive like this. She is worse off for living, you think cynically, and you know you're right.
Burns color her body like clay. Drugs stave her off from passing out from pain. Silence bears the weight of companionship to a ghost that keeps following her around.
You can't help but sit vigil in her hospital room again while she's unconscious. Gale flits in and out, looking even more guilty than you. Her mother aids with medicine, but never kisses her forehead, strokes her hair, touches her hand.
You do all of these things when no one is looking, when it is just you and Katniss and the sound of life circulating through her lungs.
"You scare the hell out of me, you fool," you mutter once. "You absolute fool. I'm so glad you're alive."
You move out of her beside chair when she wakes up, into a real bedroom. And when she is finally able to leave the hospital wing, she starts wandering, hiding. On her particularly bad days, no one can find her for hours.
Plutarch comes to you one day after three hours of searching and asks you where to look.
"How the hell should I know?" you snap at him, and he gives you this look. Like he can see right through you. Like he knows. Hell."Give me an hour."
You find her in the first place you look, a small mountain underneath a pile of covers. Curled in a ball at the foot of your bed. Tangled underneath your sheets.
For a couple minutes, you kneel at the end of the bed beside the lump of comforter. When you put a hand on what you hope is her hunched back and she doesn't flinch, you toe off your shoes and crawl into the covers until you can see her face in the half-light.
"They're looking for you," you say. She does not respond. "You can't keep this up forever, sweetheart."
She does not move for a long while, just stares at you and you back at her. Then, like every other time that has found her in your bed, she touches your chest and scoots closer. Nestles into you like a kitten. When you freeze, she pulls on your arms until they wrap around her.
You wait for the moment when she goes rigid and pulls away. Instead, she breathes deeply for a long time, ragged exhales like sobs but you don't feel anything wet against your neck.
"I got you," your murmur to her, running your hand up and down the back of her head. The air is getting stuffy under the covers, so you imagine she is ready to get up when she pulls her head back. Instead, she presses her nose up flush against yours and does what you have halfway been waiting on this whole time. Each time she has sought comfort in you, real or hallucinated, kisses have fallen on your throat, chest, forehead like parachutes. You do not miss the irony in this.
This time, however, her kisses fall on your lips, both pair drawn together like magnets after breathing the same air for the better part of a minute. Your palms sweat from behind her back. The stuffy air grows thick.
Her pecks are short, pretty absent-minded, and God help you, if you weren't fucking damned before, you are now. You sure as shit are. Because each time she dips her head, ever so slightly you kiss back. Whether she doesn't care or doesn't know, she doesn't pull away.
"Katniss—" you start, and it feels like ripping off your skin to pull away. She looks at you like she hadn't spent the last two minutes with her face pressed to yours. Like her hands weren't still cradling your face.
"We should probably get you back to Coin." She says nothing, just pulls away from you and struggles with the sheets until she is met again with fresh air. As usual, you follow her.
The way she copes is dangerous. Not just for her, but for you. Because every time you find yourself in this situation, every time she ends up in your arms, a little piece of you breaks off and lodges somewhere within her, in the dirt under her fingernails, the strands of hair in her eyes, the gulps of air circling through her chest.
You have been trying for a very long time to get these pieces of yourself back. A very long time ago, you gave up.
You realized whatever she wants to give you, a dirty old drunk, is enough. Whatever she is able to give you is enough, even when it isn't.
.
You hear she has talked to Snow. So when she comes back smelling like roses, you decide then and there to kill every last person that has used her up dry. Including yourself.
.
Her hiding spots are good, but they can still be infiltrated. Because of this, you haven't discussed with her the recently-changed game plan for the assassination, but you'll follow her lead.
You have a feeling she isn't going to play exactly by the rules, but you trust her. So when District 13 asks for your vote, of course you agree with her.
Whatever it is, whatever dark road she chooses to go down next, you will be there. Always a couple feet behind, trekking through mud and snow, quicksand bringing you both down, ice causing you to slip every few paces. Enemies on your tail, running you into her. Crushing you to her form.
Without much festivity, you realize it was inevitable for it to end up like this. For you to end up like this. A four-letter word you have not even thought aloud for twenty-five years made its way back into your vocabulary a while ago without asking your permission. Before you heard that she was dead. Before the Quell.
You used to wonder why you were reaped for 50. Why you were reaped at all. And for a long time, you did not have an answer for that. It does not surprise you when you realize it is her. She is your answer. And by God, you love her. You are in love with her. How could you not be.
You are not with the Mockingjay; you are with Katniss. You always have been. You were made to be.
.
Gale does not offer to take her home. Her mother does not even show up at the trial. No one is left for her except for you. When Plutarch eyes you with suspicion, you shrug it off. The least this girl deserves is to get to go home, after all. Hell knows you aren't leaving her here.
The insanity plea may have been enough to get her acquitted, but she still can't leave the district. Greasy Sae is the only familiar face that survived the bombing, so when the two of you get off the train, you take her hand in yours and squeeze, even if she won't look at you.
"Just you and me, sweetheart," you say, walking her to the Victor's Village. "And we're gonna be alright."
You pass by her house without even pausing—too many empty rooms that your coughing and her silence cannot fill—and pull her by the hand to yours. Sae cleaned it up a little when she heard you both were coming back, so while the dust is ever-present in the house, for once it doesn't reek of liquor.
For a couple days, she sleeps on the couch, does not bathe, refuses to eat. Won't speak to you. Levels her vision so she perpetually focuses on nothing.
One day, you get so worried that she's left you that you sit down on the couch with her and pull her head into your lap. Her limp form complies. You stay like that for the better part of six hours before she breaks her silence, curls into you.
A couple hours later, you get her to drink a glass of water. You cook her some eggs and she actually takes a bite.
When she takes the bedroom closest to yours, you say nothing. She puts her toothbrush in the same bathroom you use. You say nothing. She wears your shirts around the house, long enough to pass as dresses, sleeves rolled up and still drowning her, stocking feet across all your floors. You say nothing.
Each morning, both of you pretend to not have heard the other's screams in the middle of the night. One way or another, afternoon always finds you asleep on the couch, sometimes holding her hand, sometimes her entire body, folded into you. Tucked in the middle of your ribcage.
These times, neither of you dreams. The world is quiet. Sunlight peeks in through the blinds. Under the gold rays, you can see the hardwood floors glow.
.
A couple nights before Peeta comes back, she wanders into your bedroom after a particularly bad bout of nightmares. Multiple times, you were close to going in and waking her up, but you know what she will ask if you do, the way she'll say your name, and it all just hurts too goddamn much.
She stands in your doorway for a couple long minutes, and you don't stir. You close your eyes, slow your breathing, let her think you're asleep just to see what she'll do.
You don't know exactly what you were expecting her to do—climb in the bed probably, maybe scoot over to your side—but it wasn't this: kneel at your bedside, tangle one hand in your sandy hair, breath shallowly on your face. You do not dare open your eyes, no matter how much you want to see how she's looking at you. If she's even looking at you.
You wonder who she pictures every time she crawls to you for comfort. Whose smell she forces herself to imagine. Whose skin she plants kisses on, every time, without fail.
All of a sudden, she lets out a big gulp of air. "Every night, I watch Peeta die. Over and over and over again, in a million different ways." Another gulp. "Prim too. I'm used to them by now." There's a pause. You exhale loudly so as to not be too quiet in sleep. Your chest hurts.
"Tonight it was you." Her voice gets rough, and her hand leaves your hair. She still kneels beside your bed. "If you leave me, I have no one. And I know the way you look at me, Haymitch, the way you have always—" Pause. Inhale. Exhale. You shift in your pseudo-unconscious state. "Don't leave me, please. Please stay."
She kisses your cheek and you can feel tear tracks across her face. Either way, you know that if you move, you will do something both of you will regret, something that will make her the one to leave. You are not who she wants. You are merely who she has.
Soon enough, you won't even be that, because Peeta will be back and (hopefully) not trying to wrap his fingers around her throat, not trying to kill her. Plutarch called you the other day from the Capitol for a head's up. Said he wanted you to hear it first from him, as if someone had fucking died or something. You hung up.
She cups your face one more time before standing up, sighing, and striding back out of room. The floorboards creak in her wake.
.
The longest word in the English language with all its letters in alphabetical order is "almost."
You have never been one for organization. Organization is a righteous bitch.
.
When she looks out the window one day and sees Peeta planting primroses outside her Victor's house, the first thing she does is turn to you.
"Looks like you got your little boyfriend back, sweetheart," you say, grinning like mad because you are happy the boy is doing okay. Because this is the way it's supposed to be.
She bites her bottom lip, and suddenly you wonder what it would be like to take it between your teeth. To kiss her properly, roughly, like she deserves, like she means something.
Your smile falters. Jesus Christ, Katniss. "Do you think he's…okay?" You don't want to tell her that you knew he was coming, that you knew and didn't tell her, so you just shrug.
"He got here, didn't he? Sweetheart, I'm sure he's fine. Looks as good as ever." With this, she looks a little more sure.
"Should I go see him?" She asks, and you cross your arms so she won't see each of your ribs breaking in half, one by one, as she crawls out of your chest.
"I'll watch from the porch, just to be safe." All of a sudden, she pulls you into a hug. Flings her arms around your neck, presses her face to the corner of your neck and shoulder.
"Thank you, Haymitch," she breathes. "For everything."
You want to tell her that she can come over anytime, that his door is always open to her, but she already knows it. She knows a lot more than you give her credit for most of the time. And still she thanks you.
Saying anything more, you decide, will take much effort. So you cough. Lead her through the door. She turns around once, holds your gaze once, before waking hesitantly towards him.
You don't look at either of them when you hear her shuffle through the dirt towards the boy, probably crying. Instead, you focus on a flock of geese that have somehow decided the little pond in your backyard would be a good place to live.
She moves out a week later with the promise that nothing will change. And you know she's barely a hundred meters away, a two-minute walk, but everything has changed. Nothing will ever be the same.
.
Drinking is like that time you were sixteen, before the Reaping, that time you tied your hair up with a rubber band to get it off the back of your neck. The elastic pulled on your scalp, but it was an itching pain, not a sharp one, not the same pain that comes with a knife to the gut. Not the same one that comes with watching her walk away.
.
The highest point on earth is not the tallest mountain. It surpasses the tallest mountain by one and a half miles because it sits on a higher bulge in the earth. It is not the highest above sea level. It is the closest to the stars.
The top of this point is ice-capped. The entire mass is a volcano, inactive for over fourteen hundred years. You do not imagine it will erupt anytime soon.
You wonder what it would feel like to be up there. If you reached out your hands, would you be able to burn your fingertips on the sun? Cradle the face of the man in the moon? What would it be like to be at such a point of magnitude? How small would it make you feel?
You pack a bag, reach the summit on May 8.
Nature bends over backwards for you. When the ice melts, the sky empties and leaves you with endless blue, endless gardens and greenery and wildlife. The elevation no longer makes your ears pop—you do not feel bubbles in your lungs, throat, aches in the deepest parts of your chest and bones, but you are still at the top of a slippery slope, this mountain is still your bottle turned upside down, the last drop poured out, and you are still standing at the top, it is still a steep climb to get down.
You left your rope at home. You cannot rappel down. No one pulled you up here; you climbed.
As you're sliding down, knees bent in an effort to keep your balance, you can hear the mutts in the distance, their echoes bouncing off the side of the mountain. Off the ice you keep slipping on.
I came back to you.
I came back to you.
I came back to you.
.
Oh my god that was… the most intense writing I have ever done. I honestly don't remember the last time I rambled for that long. Thanks for sticking with me.
If you have some advice or whatever, drop me a line!