Characters: Peeta Mellark, Haymitch Abernathy
Rated: K+/minor swearing
Genre: Angst
You sit in the fashionably decorated room, with the too white floors and too clean surfaces, longing for the small and messy atmosphere of your father's bakery. But you aren't home in the kitchen, full of discolored pans and speck of flour upon speck of flour - and you'll probably never see your home again.
And instead of the warm words of your father, and the usually harsh but sometimes loving ones of your mother, the only words you hear are hoarse, and slightly slurred. Haymitch is drunk again (although you aren't surprised) and despite his lack of sobriety he is intent on coaching you for the interview.
You can't remember how many angles you've tried - you're strong, but not brutal, handsome not a playboy. Haymitch tries to get you to show something, anything to prove you have what it takes to win the games. But you don't. You are just a shy, quiet baker's son who hasn't done anything to deserve this, although to the Capitol that means nothing.
"We'll find somethin' kid," Haymitch slurs, raising his flask to dry, cracked lips once more. "There's gotta be a way to get 'cha sponsors somehow." So much for staying sober enough to help you win. But you don't even care, even though this is your life on the line. Your future, your everything.
You stopped caring the moment your name was reaped, the moment you stepped on the stage and shook Katniss hand, ultimately agreeing to try your hardest to kill the love of your life.
Maybe you're being over dramatic but you still don't care.
The anxiety, the homesickness, and all around pain that's been building up since you left home suddenly swells, and before you realize it, you angrily burst out with "I love her!" Haymitch merely raises a scraggly eyebrow, and scratches the stubble on his chin.
"What you talking about boy?"
You feel your cheeks burn red, and look down at the table, watching your reflection on the smooth metal and wishing you had something to draw with, maybe some charcoal or a pencil, anything to distract yourself from the hell currently known as your life. "Katniss," you are aware of yourself saying. "I love her."
Haymitch grins, showing surprisingly straight teeth for such a crooked person, and pats you on the back - you wince. "Yeah, yeah! Now that's a good idea! Star crossed lovers-" he pauses, making some sort of wild hand gesture, "from District 12!"
Your face flushes even more. "No," you repeat, more forcefully. "I love her. For real." And that's when you feel the tears well up in your eyes as it hits you, really hits you, that you have to kill Katniss, or watch someone else do it. As you angrily scrub at your face you turn to Haymitch, surprised to see the realization hit him, watch as his bloodshot eyes widen - in what? Pity? Sympathy? Disgust?
And his voice is as sober and honest as you've ever heard it as he whispers in a soft, broken voice, "I'm so sorry." Then he hands you his flask and you relish in the way the whiskey burns its way down your throat, hoping that maybe, just maybe, you can forget who you are and what you're doing for a little while.
"Hey, ya never know boy," you hear Haymitch say, as you are suddenly intent on drinking yourself into oblivion. "Maybe... Maybe the odds will be in yer favor."
Woody freaking Harrelson. Words can not express my love of him right now. Ugh, the movie was so utterly fantastic. Not as great as the books, but honestly I didn't expect it to be.
Anyway, wrote this a while ago, and decided to touch it up for posting.
Read and review, happy Hunger Games, and may the odds be ever in your favor
~LeiaOrganic