Welcome to the 54th Hunger Games! May the odds be ever in your favour.
Haymitch Abernathy was slouched over the couch in his house in the Victor's Village. He didn't do much else in the few days before the Reapings. It was too horrible to go out into the village and look at all the kids running around or going to school while he just watched and thought; 'it could be you, or you, or you.' Wondering who he'd be sending to their deaths this year.
He felt like he'd been doing it forever; sitting and listening to the mayor's droning about the value of the Games and then sending kids gifts while he watched them die in glorious High Definition. Really it had only been… what, four years? Three even? The pressure of having to try setting a kid up for slaughter, not just physically but emotionally, drained a person more than anything else Haymitch had ever done. Watching them get so far then be stabbed in the back by their allies or pushed off cliffs by mutts tearing and biting into their flesh. Having to see every instant of their gruesome deaths as the cameras zoomed in on their faces as they cry for help.
There was a bottle on the table delivered fresh from the Capitol. Haymitch's eyes focused on the bottle, wondering whether or not to drink the inebriating alcohol that the bottle contained. It would be so… easy to be just another hopeless mentor akin to the morphling addicts and drug users who just sat empty-eyed, waiting for the Games to be over for another year.
So easy, and yet it was exactly what the Capitol wanted. To destroy the problem victor from within. Destroy him with drink while still forcing him to kill children; every year so far he'd been given suspiciously good quality tributes and watched them climb so high only to watch them fall.
He realised he was sitting up, about to reach for the drink when he forced himself to lie back down.
Only two days until Reapings.
Two days and he wouldn't have the energy to worry about drinking.
Maybe he'd get tributes who he hated that would at least die quickly. It was an awful thing to think but it would let him get home to be free… ish for another year.
Free… hah.
