This is a one-shot written for the Starvation Forum December One-shot Writing Challenge. The prompt is: Home. I've always wanted to do something like this, and I absolutely love Haymitch/Maysilee, so out came this. I must admit it gets kind of sad and angsty at the end, but it does explain a lot in my mind at least. Read, review, and ENJOY!

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Extreme emphasis on the not.

She called me fearless. She had no idea that what I was afraid of was standing right in front of me.

We had been arguing. We were so close, yet so far away from the end, from going back. But we both knew that there was nothing to go back to if we had to leave the person we were face-to-face with. Sweat was pouring down our faces from the humidity, making me look awful but just making her even more breathtaking. There was nothing to go back to without her. This much I knew.

She narrowed her eyes in anger; hate was what I'd call it if I could face that fact. I told myself it was annoyance, just pure annoyance, like everyone felt when they would talk to me, the boy from the Seam. No one could tolerate the string of words that exited my mouth without feeling annoyed. I was used to that. This, this look she was giving me pained me beyond belief. It was hate, and I couldn't deal with hate.

"There's nothing left," she hissed. My gaze flitted down to my feet and then up to her eyes again. Her soft blue eyes that kept me under a trance. I shook my head softly, refusing everything she tried to tell me. Everything she had been telling me all along.

"There's nothing else out here, Haymitch!" She nearly screamed in my face. I felt tears come, but I blinked them back into my eyes. She had called me fearless. Bold men did not cry.

"You don't know that," I whispered, looking at the ground again. "You don't know that, Maysilee."

"Yes, I know that!" She was crying. I backed up. I couldn't deal with this. Not when we were so close. "We are standing…on a cliff at the end! This is the end of the arena, Haymitch! You can't escape them! We can't keep running and end up back at District 12! We can't go back home when we're here! You can't keep running away! And I can't keep following you!"

I clenched my jaw and looked up at her, my hair falling into my eyes. Anger surged through me now, like it had so many times before. "You can't keep hiding under me! You can't keep following me? You've only been following me because it's the only damn thing that's been keeping you alive! Because you and you're sister have had the life of the wealthy, the life I never had! You know what I did everyday, Maysilee?" I stared at her with wild eyes. Now her head was down. I barked an order at her, and she raised her petite head. "Do you know? Tell me!" My jaw was twisted in fury, and she was scared, I could tell.

"No, Haymitch, I don't." she said matter-of-factly. "And I don't care."

I was shaking now. She couldn't say that, she couldn't say that to me. Not after everything that we had been through. "I had to find my food everyday! Trade clothes, everything we had except for the blasted television that was required by the Capitol! The people who are watching us right now, girl, who probably want us to bludger each other until we're both dead, just to see what it'll be like! That's who we're fighting for! The people who control our lives, because we both just want to go home, but we can't do that with each other standing here, now can we?"

"No, we can't," she narrowed her eyes again. "But you can't just continue on and climb down this ledge because you think at the bottom you'll find some sort of fix, some sort of mend that will make everything all magical and better for Haymitch Abernathy. Open your eyes! We're both going to die!"

"Your impossible!" I screamed, my face growing red.

We stared at each other with intensity, as if we were willing for each other's head to explode. On a dime we both spun around, fuming. We stood that way for a while, always peeking back over our shoulders when the other was not. Both of us had our hands clasped at our sides as we let off our steam, my hand on my knife and hers on her blowgun. After at least twenty minutes Maysilee turned around tentatively, obviously done seething. I was not. I felt betrayed by her comments, and I was going to, quite childishly, give her the silent treatment.

It wasn't her that said the words. I surprised us both. "Go," I snarled quietly.

"Haymitch?" she asked, her voice lowered into a soft, hesitant voice. I huffed, letting go of my axe and crossing my arms. "Haymitch." She repeated, drawing closer. "I…I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. We can keep going, together, I mean."

"I don't think that's a good idea," I rasped almost inaudibly.

"What?" her voice quivered. "What did you say?" I knew she was crying again, and she placed her hand on my shoulder. "Haymitch," she sobbed.

I flicked her hand off of my shoulder. "You should go," I growled. "I don't think it's a good idea for you to be here anymore."

"Haymitch!" Maysilee bawled, trying to turn me around, to look me in the eye. After a few tries I obliged, but turned to yell in her face. It killed me to say it. It killed me to say anything like that to her.

"GO!" I screamed in her face. She backed up, terrified. "You want to, there's only us and three others! It's too late for alliances, Maysilee." I unsheathed my knife, and Maysilee whimpered, eyes wide. "Haymitch, you wouldn't, please…that's all there is, Haymitch. Let's go back."

"No," I answer with a strong face. "I'm staying here."

Maysilee sniffles, but gathers herself. "All right," she says, trying to put herself above me. "There's only five of us left." She's repeating me. I close my eyes. "May as well…say goodbye for now, anyway. I don't want it to come down to you and me."

"Okay," my voice softens. She wanted to leave. I wasn't about to stop her. "Go," I then snapped, and with a small scream she turned and ran, crashing through the foliage that led farther into the arena. The tears came suddenly, and my knife clattered to the ground. I kicked the ledge as I skirted around it, and a pebble fell off and down the side. Good riddance. But then something flew back up and hit my foot. I stared at the pebble angrily but curiously, and then I picked up a rock and threw it down the abyss, away from me, anywhere but here with me. Isolated. I bellowed as I thrust it off my hand, but the strained movement did not help.

Suddenly something hit the ground with a clank. I looked up and saw the same rock at my feet. It was the same rock, the same shade of gray with a black fleck, steaming as if it had housed with a bead of coals. I picked it up, disregarding the burning heat. I knew what it meant. And I laughed, laughed hard and manically because I knew it was all for nothing. That the Capitol truly had control even if it had a weakness, and most of all, that she had been right, and I had let that slip through my fingers like sand.

I laughed uproariously to hide the sobs rising in the back of my throat.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

"Maysilee?" I screamed, not caring how much noise I was making as I ran through the forest. "Maysilee, where are you? No…MAYSILEE!"

I broke into the clearing, where all but one of the little devils turned and blinked their beady black eyes at me. I grasped my knife, turning toward the nearest little pink long-necked demon, but Maysilee screamed, and I flashed my eyes toward her, running, trying to stop it from…

No. It's beak, the orange-pink sword of death twisted at the end in a wicked and cruel murderous smile, lunged toward her. It entered her flesh and I screamed, everything in slow motion as the beak entered her neck and she collapsed on the ground, blood everywhere. I knew her cannon would fire. I knew she would not be going back. And with that, I would not be going back, either. What was the point of going home when there was nothing to go back to, when your love was dying right in front of you and you could do nothing but strike the one brainless mutt that had killed her?

"DIE!" I howled, slashing at the birds, running at them, catching them on the wings and one in the flank, but all of them flew away, their loon-like necks bending as they dipped up and down, obviously not able to fly for long with the weight of their savage necks bringing them down. I ran to Maysilee, clasping her hand in mine, tears running down my face in one last act of affection. If I had not told her to go, if I had forgiven her, this would not have happened. She wouldn't be bleeding out in my arms. And she would be going home, because she, unlike me, had something to go back to.

She called me fearless. I was afraid right now. She was dying, and that was the only thing that terrified me.

"You're going to win," Maysilee croaked, the words barely forming from her bleeding throat, the blood gurgling out as she spoke. As the words came out I bawled, hearing the sentence grow more silent. I shook my head. "I can't," I replied, moving my head back and forth slowly. "You should have. You have something to look forward to at least, if you go back."

"So do you," she rasped. "Remember, Haymitch…by going home, you're saving a piece of me, too. District 12's second victor in fifty years."

"What's the point of it?" I asked, gripping her hand. She was slipping.

"You can live a life of saving more lives, kids like us," she smiled. "And look forward to when…I can see…you…again…"

"Maysilee, no," I whispered, bringing her hand to my mouth. But she was gone. The cannon fired. I brought her up in my arms, bending her head into my shoulder and kissing it before laying her down, wiping the blood from her neck but ignoring her blood on mine. I smiled weakly as I retreated from the dead girl, knowing nothing she said would come true, that I would die before I got to go home and fulfill her dying wish.

I saw the hovercraft appear and ran, grinding my teeth in hate for the Capitol. I ran back to the cliff and gathered my pack before setting out again, managing to avoid the site where I had said my final goodbye to the Town Girl.

For many days I kept moving until the numbers dwindled down to two. I was becoming a bit cocky, thinking that I could actually win the second Quarter Quell, become a legend. Haymitch Abernathy, Hunger Game Victor, Defeater of all Evil People. It had a ring to it. Maybe I could make a life for myself. At least make sure those in the Seam got along a bit better. Maybe even make a name for District Twelve. We wouldn't have to be the losing District anymore. Better than District 2, I bet we could be! Haymitch Abernathy, Riser of the Coal District, Comeback God. That sounded even better. And then I would order the death of all pink birds with long loon necks and stand laughing above their ashes in accomplishment. Sweet, sweet revenge felt so good. Haymitch Abernathy, Avenger of the Pretty Town Girls, Killer of All Pinkie Demons of Death. I was good at this name thing. Maybe I did have a future.

A blood-curdling battle cry shook me out of my thoughts and fantasies. "Oh God," I muttered, and turned around to see the District One girl flying at me with an axe in hand. I roared as she knocked me to the ground, swiping at me with the blade. I stabbed back with my knife, the two of us scrambling around trying to kill each other. First and Last trying to emerge as victor, ironic isn't it? I didn't think so as she sliced my leg open and I ripped open a wound in her chest. Finally I kicked her off of me and ran, grasping the new slice in my stomach as she followed suit, holding her neck with one hand and her axe in the other. She tackled me again, knocking my knife out of my hand and into the bushes. I swore and swiped my curly hair out of my face, bringing on the speed. I was going back to the cliff, but I knew it was a dead end. Literally. I closed my eyes in exhaustion as I ran, but soon fell the ground with her weight on me again. Comeback God? No way. Not anymore. After another spat with District One I had trouble holding my organs in my body—I swore I saw my liver once threatening to spill out of my torso. She had done much more to me than I had to her, and she was gaining on me. My gait was slowing, and I was tripping on even ground, trying to get farther away, thinking that maybe, just maybe, I could lose her and die peacefully if not die at all. That was the preference of most people.

She screamed more threats and death wishes at me, and I pounded on, not knowing how long I could go on. I found myself slipping just as Maysilee had. But the difference was that there was no one here to hold me as I died.

I broke out to the ledge, and collapsed in defeat. I barely noticed the axe fly over my head. But it did register that I was dying, and that I would probably be gone before it came back. I could definitely see my organs now, and I started to trash and writhe in the agony of death.

I thought of District Twelve. My 'home'. It was never my home. I never felt peace there. I never felt the love I had here. It was funny, how I had more feeling in the arena than in the place I had spent my life in for sixteen wasted years. That's what it was. Wasted. Death was home. Death was where Maysilee waited for me. Death was where I would find love and comfort. I had to pass the test of pain, first, though. Drat.

I heard the axe fly. I heard the thud of the impact with her head. I heard the cannon. I heard the trumpets. And I hated it. I wasn't going home. I wasn't going home. I was just going back to District Twelve. Without Maysilee. Alone.

Days later I found myself staring at the replay of the Games. Haymitch Abernathy, Duper of the Capitol. Now that was something I did not want to be. Of all the names I had come up with for myself, that was my least favorite. But it was the only one that I truly was. My mind was clouded, and I looked at the table with extravagant food and bottles of the grandest ciders and brews. I couldn't go back anymore. District Twelve was not home. My body walked toward the table, my arm stretched out in front of me. My mind didn't register anything, all I knew was that I needed to find the place where I was truly home, where I could see her again.

Before I knew it the bottle of wine was empty and I was tipping the chair, but she was here, sitting next to me. I smiled. "Maysilee," I muttered, and reached for another glass. I wouldn't let her slip away again. Because when she wasn't here, I suffered. When she was, I was home.

Fearless, she'd called me. Huh. She didn't know how scared I really was. Only I wasn't afraid of facing death. I was afraid of facing life without her. I was afraid of going back. I grasped the bottle.

"Haymitch?" My escort screamed. Here we go. Maysilee help me.

We're going home.

Aww, Haymitch. I actually love this character, Collins brings out the humor in him. I hope you enjoyed it, please review!