The inspiration for this was kind of a mix between 'Grown Ups' and 'Ride' by Lana Del Rey. I'm sorry if I don't update regularly for a while, I've been really bad with it lately but I'm hoping this will get me back into the swing of things. :) The time period is current, our main characters are all nineteen going on twenty and it's 2014. I don't own The Hunger Games.

It was a nice day. It was the kind of sunny day where mothers hit up the beach with their three toddlers and middle schoolers played soccer in the park. Cheerleaders lounged round the pool on days like this or had picnics in the park after an intense day of shopping, and the senior guys would play shirts and skins basketball in somebody's front yard.

Finnick knew that Haymitch would have hated it.

Of course, the problem was that Haymitch wasn't around to hate sunny, happy days anymore. He had passed away last week at the age of forty four, after a drunken night out with Finnick led to bloodied windshields, sirens, and screaming pedestrians. The fact that Haymitch, a cold and sour guy until the end, had his funeral on a warm pre-summer day that he would have loathed was not Finnick's main concern. Not by a long shot. No, his main concern was that apart from his girlfriend Annie none of the people that Haymitch mentored, Finnick's old best friends, had bothered to show up. Did they even know the poor guy was gone? He had taught them how to truly live, and now none of them cared that he was dead.

"Are you okay Finn?" Annie rested a clammy hand on his elbow. Her eyes were red, and her usually pale face was ghostly.

"Sure." He shrugged, and her hand slipped off of his arm.

"I understand, Finnick. You know I do. He was our reason for being for such a long time." Annie sympathized with him. "I may not have been as close to him anymore as you were, but he meant a lot to me. To all of us."

"See, you say that." Finnick shot her an icy glare. "But how many of them are actually here? Look around you Annie- none of them remember."

Annie looked up at him with softness in her sea green eyes.

"How could they possibly forget?"

Summer of 2011:

"Woo!" A slightly tipsy Clove Rainer stood up in the RV, popping out of the sunroof to her waist.

"Clove!" Katniss Everdeen laughed, lounging on a beanbag. "You'll get bugs in your teeth."

"Don't knock it till you've tried it, Kat-bug!" She yelled back, throwing her arms in the air. Cato sharply tugged her leg, bringing her tumbling down to the RV floor.

"I'm not gonna want to kiss you if you flies in your molars." He smirked.

"Aw, Maxwell, you're no fun." Clove affectionately called him by his last name as she jabbed in the ribs.

"I didn't pull you out of school for a year so that you could be RV bums for the rest of your life." Haymitch stepped into the main lounge area, popping open a beer can as he did so.

"So what is the point of this, grand master Abernathy?" Finnick smirked as he threw himself onto a couch with his own beer.

"And, uh, who's driving?" Annie asked nervously.

"Johanna. Don't worry kid, she'll be seventeen in two months. Then she can legally drive."

It was mid-October, and the Indian summer had finally set in. For a month they had been touring the states in Haymitch's brand new, Hippie-themed, RV.

"Are you finally going to tell us the point of this whole thing?" Gale Hawthorne asked. "Or have the ten of us just dropped a year of high school?"

"The aim of this time out…" Haymitch grinned, his eyes lighting up. "Is to stop living, and start being alive."

"I thought at least Johanna would come." Finnick shrugged, pushing a papery sausage roll around his plastic plate. The wake was awful- the beer tasted like shit and the food was awful. Whoever planned it clearly didn't like Haymitch very much.

"You know she's busy, but if I'm being honest…I thought she'd come too." Annie said, reaching across the table to grip Finnick's hand.

"I just don't understand how out of then ten of us who went through a life changing experience together because of Haymitch, we're the only two who care enough to show up at his funeral."

"People have…Moved on." Annie sighed.

"Not true." Finnick immediately blurted. "You know that's not true. None of us will ever be able to move on from that year. We learnt how to live. Are you trying to tell me that they've forgotten everything he taught us about what's truly important in life?"

"It was the best year of our lives, but people are busy now. Peeta's started a bakery in California, Katniss went with him, Johanna plays soccer in Washington, Clove's at Harvard, Glimmer's modelling, Marvel's-"

"That's not the point Annie. Haymitch changed us. We shared a bond, and I'm not going to let the years we've had apart ruin that."

"How?"

"I don't know." Finnick sighed, resting his head in his hands.

"Excuse me?" Somebody tapped him on the shoulder and he turned around warily.

"Effie." Finnick stood up to hug her.

"Oh, Finnick." She sobbed gently into his shirt. They may have had the most on and off relationship Finnick had ever seen, but that didn't change how much Effie had cared about Haymitch for five years. They were polar opposites, and that had been perfect for them.

"I have a favour to ask of you." Effie addressed both Annie and Finnick when she pulled back from his embrace. "Over in my car I have Haymitch's…Ashes."

"Oh my God." Annie inhaled sharply, like the death was only just hitting her.

"I…I know where he'd like them spread." Effie's voice broke over the words more than once.

"Where?" Finnick asked.

"Everywhere." Effie sobbed. She took a minute to dap at her eyes and compose herself before continuing. "He loved you kids- all of you. The road trips he took with you made him the man he was and his teachings were so very incredible. I think it would be the perfect send off if you would all reunite for one last road trip and scatter his ashes in every state that you visited…If it's not too much trouble.

"Oh Effie, we'd love to do it for him but-"

"We'll do it." Finnick cut Annie off before she could finish her sentence. After returning from their junior year away, the group had been close as seniors. Less than half a year later that all changed, with Clove cramming in evening classes and study sessions to catch up with tests and the workload, Annie devoting herself to swimming, Katniss focusing on making sure her Freshman sister Prim was doing okay and Marvel travelling the state for the debate team. When senior year ended, they stopped talking except for the occasional phone call once a month. But Finnick knew that this would be perfect for them, and for Haymitch.

"You will? Oh my!" Effie wrapped the teenagers in her arms. "This would mean so much to him."

"I know, Effie." Finnick responded with a grin on his face. "Trust me, I know."