I'm on a Hunger Games oneshot roll here! Best not interupt; here is the latest one, once again on Haymitch, wrote it in class. That was a productive math class. Did you know that the simplified form of w+w+w+w+w+w is 6w? I knew that.
Disclaimer: I'm not Suzanne Collins, Snow, Finnick, or Darth Vadder. There. I admitted it.
Haymitch was having another painful night alone, locked in his painful head filled with painful thoughts.
He twisted the lid on a bottle off something called Hermitage. It sounded French, not that Haymitch cared. As long as it was alcohol, it was good. Reading the bottles was when he'd been 17 and looking at the labels of them he might've cared. Wondering if maybe, just maybe, he could numb out his senses. Particularly mourn.
He was on a train going to the Capitol. Again.
He took a drink.
Effie Trinket was still there.
He took a gulp. Or two. Effie alone was worth draining a quarter of the bottle.
Especially since she scolded Haymitch for trying to shake off the pain caused by people like her.
Drink.
It was because of the superiors there that Haymitch had to kill people. And the train was bringing him back there.
That deserves a drink.
These people had been the ones who had ordered his mother to be killed.
Definetely deserved a gulp. Or two. Three.
Right after she'd watched her other son get killed. How old had Fintan been, 8? 9? Who was Haymitch kidding, he remembered exactly.
He took a drink.
7.
Another...
And how could Haymitch forget Mariah? Had he done that for a single day so far? You didn't forget the girl who made things okay after coming out of the arena, or whose bracelet you wore throughout the blood baths and sleepless nights of listening for predators.
Another quarter of the bottle right there.
The overall picture of a broken apart life he'd rebuilt after the Capitol destroyed the first and spit on its grave. Finding toys and balls for Clay to play with in the big Victor house, watching his mother get a good night of sleep, Mariah smiling at him when they met up after school, or the sweet smell of lavender that hung on her… It was okay for a bit. Haymitch's life. Not perfect, but good. It could have gone on forever.
Oops, guess not.
Oh, look at that. The bottle was finished.
This isn't good for you, Haymitch thought.
But thinking about that was different than uncapping another one and taking a drink.
Drink. The new bottle tasted better than the last. Italian wine was better.
And Finnick, Johanna, Wirress- all of them, living lives like lives weren't worth living because the Capitol was like a hunting dog; it never let its prey go. It always made sure there was some bit of fear inside of you and created it if you weren't. Hostages and killing your family and making it clear they would do it…
Drink.
Or people like Annie Cresta, who were just completely ruined. He remembered seeing her in the training rooms before her post-game breakdown. Happy, smiling, calm… Ruined now.
He cringed and took a drink.
And the last few kids he'd mentored- getting skinnier and more scared by the year.
Drink.
Maybe it was a good thing they had died. Maybe it was better to die than to survive and live like the Victors were. Maybe one way or another, you really did die when you got reaped.
As defenitive as the drink he took with the thought.
The other 21 kids who died every year. None of them deserved it.
Drink.
None of them.
Drink.
The two kids in the train right now didn't really deserve it either.
A drink each in advance.
He wasn't sure what their names were-
Drink.
Katherine? Nyssa? Peter? Pete?
Drink.
-But he wouldn't like seeing them on a tombstone- he knew that much.
He drunk now- he tried not to get drunk at funerals.
Like Mariah.
Drink, drink, drink.
Like Finton.
Drink, drink, drink.
How much more dying children could Haymitch stand?
Drink, drink.
Mom.
He chugged.
What the hey- while he was at it. Maysilee Donnor.
Drink.
Dad had died from lung poisoning in the mines. That was that Capitol's fault too- that he had to go work even if he was already sick from the air.
It was an old pain, but Haymitch drunk to it anyways.
The look his father had given Haymitch when he rolled out of bed in the morning, pain etched in every premature line of his face, but then he'd seen Haymitch, smiled and said 'hey sport'.
He was already hurt when he got up, he came home a little worst every night.
Drink.
How old had Finton been when it'd done him in? A few months?
Haymitch was getting queasy now.
Not old enough to remember his father.
Drink.
And they were all together now, wherever dead people went. Leaving Haymitch alone and angsty and broken with only one way to make it go away.
Drink.
Mariah wouldn't like it.
Drink.
Drink.
He missed her.
He bit his lips.
He missed them.
Drink.
It was sad that he had to use plural form to describe the loved ones he'd lost.
He even missed 'them'- the other tributes, earlier, when they'd been alive. The old 'them'. The happy Annie, the worry-free Finnick, the confident Beetee... Looks like the games had taken everyone from him, one way or another.
Drink.
Drink.
Drink.
Drink.
Drink.
Drunk.