Haymitch's Girl
A/N: This chapter takes place about six months after the fall of the Capitol.
Chapter 1
"I have another name for the book."
I'm startled by Haymitch's appearance by my side. Not because he has another addition to my memory book, the one I began to write to remember all the important people in our lives, to remember the victors from previous Hunger Games, to memorialize the one who's deaths were so senseless. Though we have filled out hundreds of pages already, occasionally someone thinks of another person who should not be overlooked.
Normally, Haymitch's so soused that his gait is accompanied by thunderous stomps. I think he does it on purpose to annoy me.
I finish the dish I was cleaning with a quick swipe with my rag. As I place the plate onto the drying rack next to the sink I try to figure out how Haymitch was able to sidle up the way he did.
"Another victor?"
Turning to face him, I realize I haven't seen Haymitch in over a week, since his stash of white alcohol ran out. Sometimes, when I know he's running low, I will sneak over to his house and restock a bottle or two. I figure he's earned it. But the pharmacy was out, too, and has been waiting on a shipment for a long while. At some point recently I heard a news story about a derailed train carrying a shipment to 12. I assume his supply was on that train.
Our new factories produce many different kinds of medicines, for ailments from sore throats to mental instabilities. But they don't make alcohol, not even medicinal or rubbing. At first I thought that it was a good sign, that maybe Haymitch could wean himself down off the stuff. The Hunger Games are finally over. But the memories, the nightmares, they live on. They plague my sleep, they torture Peeta's conscious mind. I understand his need for drink. It's like my need to hunt. To free my mind, to clear it of those demons, to find a moment of solitude in a destroyed world.
It only stops the pain briefly. But it's better than nothing. So I let him have his spirits.
"No." Haymitch pulls out a chair from the kitchen table, plops himself down on the wood, moaning slightly as if he were in physical pain. There is something off about him today, and I can't quiet place it. "She wasn't a victor, not in the sense we were."
"Are," I correct him. We are all victors, and nothing or nobody can take that from us. I don't think of it in the sense of the Games, not anymore. I was a pawn of the Capitol, just like Peeta and Johanna and Beetee and Finnick and the rest of us. No, we are victors of the rebellion. We brought down the Capitol, we killed Snow. Well, we didn't technically kill Snow. I had the chance, and I made the decision to kill Coin instead. But it was us, the victorious rebels, who ended the tyranny and gave our people the chance to start again.
"Are," he repeats as he waves his hand. But his tone lacks its usual bite. I walk around the table so that I can see him face to face. His eyes are red, but not from alcohol. His face is puffy, and I can see clearly that he is completely sober. He has been crying. Yes, the tears are long gone, but their aftermath is still visible.
For a moment I freeze. Haymitch has been crying, and he has sought me out. This is the type of thing Peeta is better to handle. He would know just how to address him without being condescending, would know the right words to comfort him. Because the longer I stare at Haymitch, who must have decided that the flowered tablecloth is the most fascinating thing ever since he can't meet my eyes, I can tell that whoever he wants to add to the book was very important to him. Haymitch, the miserable, uncouth, untidy, scornful drunk who has been alone for longer than I have been alive. This person he wants to add to the book was someone that he loved.
"Do you maybe want to wait for Peeta?" I ask lamely. Haymitch shakes his head. "Okay, well let me find the book."
I am about to turn down the hallway that leads to my bedroom. Our bedroom, Peeta's and mine. Because even though he still has his own home in Victors Village, which is where he currently is, fixing a hole in the roof, he has come to spend his nights here. There were many nights when I wanted to be alone, to cry myself to sleep, snared by nightmares of Prim engulfed in flames, me unable to save her this one last time. But I knew I needed him with me, to halt the thrashing, to murmur soothing words in my ears. It became a deal between the two of us. We need each other. We love each other.
But Haymitch stops me from my destination. "No," his voice cracks. I fear that he will begin crying again, but I reprimand myself. Haymitch may not be a part of the deal between Peeta and I, but he is the next closest family we have. Plus, when has Haymitch ever cried voluntarily in front of me? This is something very important, and I get the overwhelming sense that this is something he wants, he needs to tell me, only me.
"Okay," I whisper, unable to speak any louder. I feel a lump form in my throat, even though he hasn't told me anything yet. I return to the table and pull out a chair of my own. "You don't want me to write it down?"
He shakes his head. "Later." He finally brings his gaze up to meet mine, and they are rimmed with that red, that telltale red that he is about to tell me something no one else knows. "Maybe."
Not knowing exactly how to start, since normally I would have a pen and paper to utilize, I wait for him to begin. I really wish I had the book in front of me. Sometimes the stories are so heartbreaking that I let the emotions pour through me and into the pen. I become numb and the words bear the grunt of the pain, the poor soul whose life was mercilessly taken by the Capitol. But without the book I feel naked, exposed and vulnerable. Maybe Haymitch wants me to be this way, so I truly understand.
"I'm ready," I encourage, when Haymitch says nothing. His eye's dart to the front door, the one I left open so I could feel the cool breeze as I washed. I always have a door or window open, so I know I can breathe, that there is air. I hate being shut in, it reminds me of the mines and the underground tunnels of the Capitol. And I need the air, the cool air that eluded me in the Quarter Quell.
"Can you shut that?"
Swallowing back that lump in my throat, and fighting my baser need for openness, I lean far enough back in my chair so that my fingers just graze the handle. I push forward on it and the heavy door quietly clicks shut. "Thank you," he says quietly.
"Who is she?" I prompt. I'm not prepared to hear this story, whoever she is. But I get the feeling that once Haymitch tells it, a giant weight will be lifted from his shoulders. Of course some of it will land on me, but I decide I'm willing to bear some of the burden. "I'm ready," I repeat.
"Her name was Delianna. I loved her. And they killed her." His voice is so void of emotion that it's jarring. It was as if I asked him how his geese raising business was going.
Loved her? Haymitch once told me, a million years and a thousand miles ago, that he had a girlfriend before the games. That only two weeks after becoming the victor of the fiftieth Hunger Games his family and his girl were dead. He has never mentioned it since, not until now anyway. It was something that I knew better than to ask. Now it seems he is ready to tell me.
"She was your girlfriend, before the game?" I ask, softly. This conversation is so unlike us, so serious, no fight in it at all.
He nods, then knits his brows. "I want to tell you her story. I want you to know that she lived, that she died. I want to relieve myself of her memory." He looks up again at me, his eyes boring into mine. "This is between us, Katniss."
"I thought you wanted to put it in the book," I counter, but with no heat. Merely a clarifying question.
"Later, maybe. But I need you to know. To know her."
"Okay. Tell me her story."
"Her name was Delianna," he repeats, but his voice catches on her name. "She had long brown hair, like you. And she wore her hair in the same way everyday, like you with your braid. Except she used to pull the top of it away from her face and tie it, and let the bottom hang down straight. She had the bluest eyes I have ever seen, bluer than Peeta's. They stood out so much from the other kids from the Seam. And her skin was so pale it was almost white." He is struggling. It's like I can feel the tension coiled within my own muscles, taut to the point of tearing. I know, without him telling me, that he has not conjured up her image in a very long time. Maybe not even that day he first mentioned her. Hers is a memory buried very deep within his heart, deep as the mineshafts. "She wasn't traditionally beautiful." There is a pause here, dragging on for just a beat. Then another. "She was beautiful to me."
I try to put together a picture in my mind. He implied that she was from the Seam. The dark hair, yes that makes sense. Most of the Seam kids had that. But the blue eyes? That was a trait of the townspeople, the ones who had what little money there was in 12. Like Peeta. Like…I swallow as I think of her. Like Prim.
Those eyes, and the pale skin, yes, she must have been like Prim. One parent from the town, one from the Seam.
"Maybe I could get a glass of water?" Haymitch snaps out of his reverie, and eyes the pitcher sitting on the counter. I stand and grab two glass, fill them and hand one to him. He drinks greedily. "Thanks" He downs the rest, and clears his throat.
"She certainly wasn't a pain like you." He laughs at this, but not out of malice, or even out of humor. I resist the urge to roll my eyes, knowing this isn't about me. "But there was something about her…when I met you I saw it again."
"She could hunt?" I offer.
"No," This time the laugh does have a bit of humor behind it. "Certainly not. She was a thinker."
A thinker? Haymitch has never thought of me as a thinker. I don't think of me as a thinker. That's Peeta. Where is he going with this?
"Well, unless she was a Mockingjay, I don't know what else we could have in common." I know this probably isn't helping. But that sadness that permeated the room only moments before seems to be ebbing, ever since that first chuckle.
Haymitch's mouth twitches, just slightly. Like he's choosing his words carefully. At last he finally decides. "She couldn't use a bow. But, like you Katniss, she was a fighter."