AN: This is my fic for the Fic Exchange on Caesar's Palace. The person I was writing for was baobabs [Rachel] who I really love, so.
It contains the following prompts: "I was the one who showed you the sky", "you've taken pride in becoming nothing", "take my hand, drag me down" & "and am I the one that can't be saved?"
Haymitch/Maysilee
When Maysilee comes to him during the night, Haymitch can't tell whether he classes it as a nightmare, or as a dream; the fact that she's there with him makes it something to cherish, a vision that he never thought he should have…but he can never touch her. She's not there, not really, and the fact she's so tantalisingly close to him, yet so far—it's what almost destroys him every time she comes.
(That's every night; he knows he thrashes and screams and grunts during the night, but it's not just because there's a monster after him. It's because Maysilee is there, and he's trying to save her.)
Sometimes, he doesn't make it; sometimes, the past happens, and Maysilee's killed by the Career—and Haymitch just stops fighting. He doesn't want to defeat this tribute again, because he's lost the only love he's ever known, and in this dream, he can change what happens.
He can die to be with Maysilee, and just for a while, he can pretend that that's what happened in real life, before the dawn comes and drags him back to consciousness, back to a world which he despises.
But sometimes, he gets there in time to pull her from the clutches of the enemy, and they race off into the woods together. They ignore his injury, ignore the fact that they're still in the arena and need to defeat the final tribute and one of themselves, because this is Haymitch's dream, and anything can happen here.
It's not the same, though, because as the years pass, the once idyllic scene twists to become something almost torturous, for Haymitch knows everything that passes in the real world—and so does Maysilee.
"Where do you go, when you're not here?" Haymitch asks the girl who theoretically lies in his arms, but when he reaches out to stroke her hair, his hand seems to almost pass through her. There are times when he can press his teenage lips to hers, and there are times when she's nothing more than a hologram; it depends how much he's had to drink; the more he has, the more real she is.
Maysilee turns to face him, her soft, blue eyes showing knowledge beyond the years she's supposed to have; the tenderness with which she strokes his face doesn't seem right in someone so young, either—but she's not, not really. She's actually almost forty years old, like Haymitch, but they're trapped in the bodies they were together in last.
"I watch over you," she tells him. "I try and make sure that President Snow doesn't try and hurt you—but I don't need to check his plans; you've taken pride in becoming nothing, so all my work seems to be is ensuring you don't drink yourself to death."
(Neither of them mention how, no matter how much he hates life, Haymitch Abernathy is scared of dying, even if it could leave him in a better place with Maysilee by his side for real.)
Haymitch freezes. "I…you're someone too pure—pure by our world's standards, at least—to understand what I do, what I go through every day to try and forget what the Capitol's done to me. You're on a different level to me; you're the one who showed me the sky, in those brief moments of our alliance, and whatever I do to try and mimic them, it doesn't work.
"I lash out and I kill; that doesn't get me to where you are. I turn sober, fight through your final moments and lose you; that doesn't get me to where you are. Whatever I do, it isn't good enough, so I'd rather be nothing than be someone the Capitol wants to parade around."
Maysilee shakes her head, and places her hand in his; he can just about feel her touch on his skin, her (imaginary—though really, everything's imaginary here) warmth passing into him, and it's more magical than anything else he's felt in the time elapsed since her death.
"Take my hand, drag me down to wherever you are," she whispers into his ear, her voice ragged with anguish. "I don't want to be flying high when you're not with me—you're damaged, I know, and the world can see that; I can see that, too. I've known that since we met officially, on the train to the Capitol, and all my attempts to heal you have been unsuccessful."
He chuckles once, without humour. "In vain, you mean—pointless, a waste of your energy which could have let you win the Hunger Games, rather than me," he comments, the purpose of this not clear even in his own mind. "You're so real to me, Maysilee, as you are every night, but this isn't real. And I don't know whether or not I should be close to you, because it hurts when I wake up and you're not there; when I wake up to find a pool of sick beside a half-empty liquor bottle, it rips me apart even more."
With that, Maysilee reaches over and presses her lips to Haymitch's, and for just a few seconds, he's able to forget what's happened over the past two and a half decades, almost, because this is why he allows himself to continue coming here. It's torture when he loses her, and it's torture when he wakes up in the morning, alone, but for the time she's in his arms, it makes everything worthwhile.
(He just can never tell anyone about this, because they'll say he's overreacting and that he doesn't have the right to behave as he does. So it's best to let the populace of Panem believe he's drinking only to dull the replays of his time in the arena, rather than to see Maysilee.)
"You can't be saved," she whispers against his lips, and he half wants to yell at her to ask her why, why doesn't she think he can be saved, but there's no point: she's right. "I'm not going to lie to you; I see you drinking yourself to death, trying to forget everything and remember it at the same time—and it's doing nothing but tear you apart. And there's nobody to save you. I'm so sorry, Haymitch, I truly am. If only I could be with you."
He doesn't know what to say to this, so he just kisses her again, trying to make this nightmare a dream—at least for now.
.
And just like that, he's back.
The dawn breaks, turning the sky from its previous ebony colour, to one that's a mixture of every colour Haymitch has ever seen; Maysilee called it an artist's easel, that first sunrise on the train to the Capitol, and he's not been able to see it as anything else since.
It's far too early for him to be awake, but for the first time in months, his head doesn't feel like it's about to explode from the alcohol. He's awake. He's awake and functioning—and Maysilee, the one who deserves to be where he is today, isn't. She's dead, and she has been for twenty four and a half years, whereas he's still standing, no matter how hard he's tried to fall.
"And I'm the one who can't be saved," he whispers into the silence of his 'home', his voice cracked with despair. "It looks like you were wrong, like always, Maysilee."
(Because he has a chance to be saved; she lost hers when the tribute took her life.)
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