Disclaimer: Oh, I wish ...
A/N: I'm not sure of what exactly this is, but it's for the November oneshot challenge at Caesar's Palace. [Also it's (separately) for Johanna (turtledoves), because it's virtual cream to go with the nonexistent cake ;) *shrugs* Fair, right? :) ]
'You see her when you close your eyes;
Maybe one day you'll understand why;
Everything you touch surely dies'
― Let her go, by Passenger
Haymitch Abernathy knows Maysilee Donner by name for exactly two weeks and five days, and during that time she saves his life on three separate occasions.
Maysilee is sixteen, a blonde Town girl, and Haymitch does not know her name until they are reaped together for the 50th Hunger Games. On the train to the Capitol, he makes some cynical, snarky comment about how it's the train to certain death. Lian, a small Seam girl, bursts into tears, and the other boy, reduced to silence by the thought of his impending death, says almost nothing for the rest of the trip. But Maysilee punches him in the nose and tells him to shut the hell up before she does worse; Haymitch laughs, chokes a bit on the blood, and decides he likes her.
He's seen her around, of course: in town, at school, hanging out at the sweetshop her parents owned ― an almost revered place for the Seam kids who, in their abject situations, never had enough money to fill their stomachs, let alone to use for treats ― but just the norm for the Donner twins. Haymitch spends a lot of time at that sweetshop, since his little brother Adam and his friends spend far too much time peering in through the shop window, fogging up the glass with hot breath and gazing wistfully at the sweets and their iridescent wrappers in the display window. One of the Donner twins ― the hard one, (the smart one?) ― will roll her eyes and yell at them every time she sees a kid from the Seam there, but the other ― the one with a soft voice and an even softer smile ― will discreetly turn a blind eye, and, on occasion, there'll be a lollipop or two lying on the ground beside the front steps, wrapper shining brightly in the sun. Haymitch never learns which twin is the benefactor and which is not, nor does he decide which he prefers. (Adam says adamantly that the best one is the nice one with sweets ― of course he does, he's only nine and almost nothing like Haymitch, he can swallow his pride ― but Haymitch is torn, because the hard twin he can relate to and understand, in a way, but the soft twin is nice to Adam, and usually that is enough.) For a long time afterwards, he wonders how identical twins can be so damn different.
During training in the Capitol, Maysilee and Haymitch do not stick together. Maysilee flits from station to station, starting fires and learning the different plants and poisons; Haymitch spends two days learning how to use a knife correctly and practising throwing spears so they stick properly in the target: attempting, mostly unconsciously, to live down the degrading coal miner costumes they'd been dressed in for the chariot parade.
Ironically, it is here that Maysilee first saves his life, in a roundabout way. During training, the Career tributes move in a taunting, laughing group and target specific tributes, but when, on the third day, they hone in on Haymitch, Maysilee jabs the knife she's practising with into his back, piercing his shirt and just barely grazing his skin, and warns him that if he says a single thing when they come over, she'll stick the knife in deep until the tip come out the other side. Although Maysilee has to grab his arm when a boy from Two slams his shoulder into Haymitch's and almost knocks him over, he's too busy telling her that she wouldn't dare to notice when the bulk of the Careers walk past or hear their jeers and taunts.
(On the second day of training, one boy from Seven gets in a fight with a Career, gives him a lucky black eye. During the bloodbath, the same Career targets Seven and caves in his head with a mace, but leaves the boy to bleed out instead of finishing him. Haymitch, watching the video after the Games, thanks Maysilee mentally and wishes, pride be damned, that he could do it in person.)
On the last day of training, he moves from the weaponry stations to the edible plants and poisons and races Maysilee and Jace, the other boy tribute from Twelve, on the agility and ropes courses. It is the most social he is all week, even including the interviews ― during those, he plays up his brooding, arrogant angle without much difficulty, and Maysilee flirts with Caesar and charms the crowd with cheerful stories of home, stories Haymitch thinks must be heavily edited to appeal to the Capitol crowd.
The arena is stunning, appealing even to Haymitch, who, in Maysilee's words, has about as much charm and eye for beauty as a dead slug. He spends five seconds marvelling at the brilliantly coloured flowers growing in clusters in the meadow and at the smell they permeate through the area, then he visualises Maysilee and Adam, in that order, and makes them berate him mentally until he's quite clearheaded and fired up to boot. Sure, it's weird, but if it means he'll make it out of the inevitable bloodbath alive, he's not going to complain. Haymitch notes that the other tributes are mostly distracted and sees an opportunity, so when the gong rings, he runs straight for the Cornucopia and hopes to whatever god or deity there is that he doesn't get beheaded or gutted on his way out. From the Cornucopia, he heads straight for the woods and doesn't stop until he's around a kilometre away and he can check his supplies, the threat of being stabbed in the back ― or, indeed, in the front ― diminished by the distance he's established.
For a week or so, Haymitch survives relatively unscathed, continuing to head away from the Cornucopia since he figures the Arena has to end somewhere. Then he gets cornered by three of the Careers, and suddenly his death seems imminent. As he dodges an axe blow from the boy from Four and stabs the girl from Two in the stomach with his knife, Haymitch decides he'd much rather be back at the lake facing the squirrels. And when he's finally, inevitably disarmed, and he's killed both Four and Two, Haymitch watches the sun's rays glance off the sword blade of the One boy, and wonders whether he ought to be scared, and if Maysilee's doing alright, and if his mother will make Adam turn away from the screen.
As it happens, he gets answers to one of his three questions, because just when the One boy finishes gloating and presses his sword to Haymitch's throat ― the explanation:"it'll hurt more with a sword," ― Maysilee Donner steps out of the woods, her poisoned dart finds the back of One's neck, and she saves his life for the second time in two weeks.
"We'd live longer with two of us," and even though her blowgun's pointing downwards and not aimed at him, it's loaded, the metal tip of the dart is shining with whatever poison it's coated in, and anyway, he knows firsthand how fast she is.
He rubs his neck. "Guess you just proved that. Allies?"
She nods, and he suppresses a shudder, because the Hunger Games are all about betrayal and backstabbing, and Maysilee Donner is nothing if not alert and deceptive and hard to kill.
Resourceful turns out to be another word to add to Maysilee's growing list of practical qualities, and Haymitch is not that bad either: together they are undoubtably dangerous. They set up a system to collect rainwater, are just about unstoppable when fighting together, and eat well off food in other tributes' packs. Haymitch insists they continue moving forward, but he refuses to tell Maysilee the reason until she stops and refuses to go any further without an answer. Even then, he keeps his explanation short and to the point: "It has to end somewhere, right?" She snorts in derision, but they've got nothing better to do, so they keep going until finally, using a blowtorch gained from a dead tribute, they make it to what must be the edge of the arena, a rough track metres from a steep cliff.
Haymitch is intrigued, but Maysilee is clearly disappointed. "That's all there is, Haymitch. Let's go back." She scuffs her foot in the dust and a couple of stones are dislodged, falling into the chasm. The dust blows up into a miniature white cloud and then settles slowly.
"No," he says firmly. "I'm staying here." I've got to stay here.
She lifts her shoulders in a slight shrug. "All right. There's only five of us left. May as well say goodbye now, anyway. I don't want it to come down to you and me."
Haymitch clenches his jaw. No, he thinks irrationally, even though it's the final five and they have to split soon anyway. "Okay," he says. He keeps his gaze fixated on the ground still, because he's unsure of his facial expression.
Maysilee sighs very slightly, and then walks away. He hears her footsteps recede and then, very deliberately, he turns and walks the other way, skirting the cliff, while behind him, two or three small stones fly back out of the abyss, as if flung back by an unseen hand. Haymitch frowns, stares at the dusty ground, then kicks a stone over the edge. When it flies back over a few moments later, he starts to laugh. What was he expecting anyway, some sort of weapon, an escape? It's not a weapon. It's not a way out. It's useless.
He laughs at his stupidity until he hears the screams ― Maysilee, of course it's Maysilee ― and then he runs, even though their alliance is over and if he wasn't Haymitch and she wasn't Maysilee and if watching each others' backs isn't what they do, then he could just walk in the other direction and ignore her. But he is Haymitch and she is Maysilee, and he's pretty sure she'd do the same thing for him, so he runs for her and makes it there just in time to see her struggling in the midst of a flock of birds ― birds with feathers the same candy pink of sweets Adam ogles back home ― and then she's stabbed through the neck by a bird with a razor sharp beak and cruel eyes, and he's just too late.
Haymitch stays with her while she dies ― just too late ― anyway. It's the least he can do, after all, since maybe if he'd been quick enough ― too late ― he might have been able to do something ― anything ― to help. He holds one of her hands and tells her it'll be alright, even though they both know it's a lie, and really the only reason she's not telling him to shut up is that she can't manage to speak, not with her neck in that state. He watches her other hand scribbling frantically in the dirt, unsure if there's a purpose to it or whether she's just reacting to the pain. But once she's dead ― and it seems like hours before her faint, choking breaths finally cease, although when he watches it later on tape, he's barely sitting in the dust with her for two minutes ― he sees she's scratched the word 'force' into the dust, accompanied by 'fie,' and a long scratch. And she wasn't finished when her hand went limp. Haymitch thinks perhaps she was writing 'force field.'
He counts this as the third time she saves his life.
(Too late, too late, too late.)
Haymitch Abernathy knows Maysilee Donner by name for exactly two weeks and five days, and during that time she saves his life on three separate occasions.
He cannot manage to save hers even once.