A/N: I just had a thought, guys. I've written so many Haymitch stories and they're all essentially one-shots. Would we prefer it if from now on I just updated one story with all the one-shots or do we not mind? I like the idea of many separate stories, but I know for organizational purposes many authors do lump all their one-shots about one character into a single story.
I seriously have many more lined up. Team Haymitch- where we have all the booze.
We haven't actually seen Katniss in weeks. Now that her trial is finally over and Plutarch has managed to gloss over the trivial matter of the assassination of a politician, I've been mandated to accompany her back to 12.
Sometimes I think we all forgot during the war that she's still a minor. Perhaps not a child, but not legally allowed to look after herself. Her mother wants to go to District 4 and oversee the start of a hospital there, and there's no one who'd be better suited for the task. Anyway, it's quite clear that Mrs. Everdeen can't go back to the ashes and ghosts that await her in 12. No one wanted to force her back into a district that echoed of Prim, her husband who was killed in the mines, and scores of dead friends and neighbors.
I don't know what makes anyone feel that I'm better equipped to live there, but I didn't protest when Plutarch told me the court's decision. I am to continue looking after Katniss as her mentor, technically serving as her legal guardian until she comes of age. The thought doesn't frighten me as it once might have done.
That she needs a guardian is a moot point. Katniss won't like it very much, but she'll have to live with it.
Lucky for her, it's a little late for me to cultivate my parenting skills. Being a mentor must be somewhat similar to being a parent in Panem though; I know what it's like to watch a kid you love be crushed over and over again when there's not much you can do about it.
I walk down the hall of District 12's floor in the Training Center, where they've kept her locked in her old bedroom. I argued that they should find somewhere better, a place less tainted by associations with the Games. There's a whole President's mansion at our disposal, but no one seems to realize that means an almost unlimited array of rooms that have nothing to do with the arena. No, quite the opposite: everyone is fixated on the idea of the Games.
We won't be having a final, symbolic Hunger Games. Paylor put a stop to that almost immediately upon being elected as interim president.
While this and a whole slew of other issues are decided, on the surveillance cameras I see Katniss start to look more like a morphling as weeks pass. Her ribs stick out and her cheekbones take on an alarming prominence. She doesn't eat anything substantial, and for a while she tried to stop taking the pills. That didn't work out for her. Once the withdrawal hit, it hit hard and she crawled on the floor trying to find a stash that didn't exist.
Then, one day, she started singing and we all learned why mockingjays fall silent before they try to join in her song. I grew up in 12, but I never learned half the songs she sang. Her voice is obviously untrained but something spectacular. Plutarch finds it charming; I find it unsettling. How a sound like that could come out of pragmatic, grounded Katniss I have no idea.
She even sings in her sleep, although I'm not sure that calling it sleep is really accurate. Sometimes, she talks to Prim or Cinna or Finnick or Boggs.
But mostly she talks to me, which is weird because I'm not dead. In a strange halfway awake state, she tells me things she never would have voluntarily. Like a good mentor, I will try to forget them.
Nobody was allowed to have any contact with her. Otherwise I would have been in the elevator within minutes, riding up to 12's floor and breaking down her door. Initially, I threatened Plutarch and even Paylor that I was going to see her- regardless of what anyone ordered.
During our most memorable argument, they threatened to have me locked in solitary confinement too if I didn't calm down and sober up. At that, I threw an ugly- but apparently priceless- Baroque vase at Plutarch's head. I was more insulted by the idea I should calm down. Effie, of all people, managed to drag me out of the room before we came to blows, but I must have had too much to drink afterward. I only started functioning again two nights later.
I wanted to tell Katniss everything would be okay because that's the sort of thing she needed to hear. Now, finally, I'm allowed to take her home. She may be broken, but she's alive, and who hasn't had to break during this war?
Today I am completely sober. It wouldn't do to face her- after weeks of being isolated- smelling like a backwoods distillery and speaking in snide sentences. There will be plenty of time for that once we get back to 12.
I pause to take a deep breath. I know what I will find behind her door. But I don't know how prepared I am for it. Holding her outside of District 13's Justice Building while she sobbed over Peeta was awful enough, but this new source of despair is keener. We knew what to do to fix her that time, not like that worked out well in the beginning. I could kick myself for not suspecting something like Peeta's hijacking. Anyway, we broke out Peeta, which is probably what Snow anticipated, but we thought it would coax Katniss back into one piece.
Good intentions pave the road to hell, but we had plenty of good in mind when we rescued Peeta, Annie, and Johanna. This problem can't be fixed. Prim is dead and the rebels did it. We did it.
No one said as much to Coin's face. But Beetee came to me one afternoon and confessed he wasn't sure what happened, if it was the bombs he and Gale designed or if it was the Capitol wreaking one last punishment on innocent, already injured and frost- bitten children. I know Beetee. He wouldn't have gotten worked up if there hadn't been a high possibility- a probability- that Coin had ordered a secret mission to expedite the end of the war. It doesn't matter that we don't know: ignorance renders us complicit in either case.
Privately I suspect that's exactly what happened, especially after Katniss shot Coin and not Snow. She and Beetee can't both be wrong. Nothing but being Prim's murderer could have earned Coin that sure death. Katniss might be emotionally scarred, but she's not a lunatic.
She kills for better reasons than ambition.
The door creaks from disuse as I open it. I am accompanied by a couple of nurses and a doctor, but I want my face to be the first thing she sees. Her reaction is dazed, like she can't quite place me or where she is. She sprawls on the bed under a thin blue hospital gown, the only clothing she was given.
The lights are off and the air in the room is stale. It's empty, devoid of its usual decorations or even a blanket to ward off the chill that still seeps in from outside.
My throat tightens as I say, "Hey, sweetheart." But it comes out with my old wry tone.
The first emotion of several I address is anger. Katniss was the face of this rebellion- it couldn't have started nor ended as effectively without her- yet no one saw fit to treat her more decently during her confinement. Her skin is mottled and the grafts haven't healed properly, even though they should have by now.
I knew what was happening all along, but seeing it firsthand brings on a flare of disbelief. Once the anger ebbs I feel a fierce need to protect her, which I know is a futile effort. I can't keep her safe from what chases her now.
She squints at me. "Haymitch?"
"We're going home," I say.