Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
Light Yet To Be Found, pt 2
When Haymitch wakes a few days later he has his worst headache ever, not just in his head, but tapping every few minutes on the outside.
It takes him longer to realize than it should've to notice the irritating 'tap, tap, tap' isn't on his head but on his house.
Using every swear in his vocabulary, he rolls out of his bed and nearly breaks his neck when his foot lands on one of his discarded bottles. He lets out another round of swears, first at the bottle, then at whoever is at the door and interrupting his beauty sleep.
Throwing out a last few curses, he pulls his knife out and flings the door open.
"What?"
He expects kids. They've let up the past couple of years, but they still come to his door sometimes and beg for money or food, neither of which he has on hand. It was one of the few bits of useful wisdom old Delmond Seward had passed on to Haymitch when he'd won his Games.
"Don't keep money in the house. They're gonna break in looking for cash, probably a couple of times, but if you don't have any they'll stop," he'd told Haymitch as he'd let him pick out which of the dozen or so empty houses he would be spending the rest of his miserable life in.
Just as old Delmond had predicted, Haymitch had a couple of break-ins, chased a few idiots down and threatened to gut them, but after those incidents he was left alone.
The food he simply didn't have, other than some random scraps in the icebox. He ate at the Hob, when he went on his liquor run. There was just no reason to keep more food in the house.
There are no kids though, no dirty faces looking up at him or coal covered hands reaching up to him for handouts, but a pair of hazy blue eyes and delicate hands grasping at yet another tin, no doubt containing some kind of sweet.
Matilda tilts her head and blinks at the knife, still pointed just below her eye line. She doesn't appear bothered by it though, just pays it a few seconds of attention before letting her eyes float past it and up to Haymitch.
"You said I could come for a visit."
For a minute he just stares at her, mouth slightly open, slowly processing what she's said.
He vaguely remembers telling her she could come, but he'd never dreamed she would venture all the way out to the Victors' Village to hold him to it. Matilda isn't exactly someone who wanders all over the District, and that's probably for the best. Without someone to guide her he's almost positive she'd end up somewhere she didn't belong. He can only imagine what would happen to someone as pretty and as easily flustered as Matilda if she ended up in the dark back alleys of the Seam.
She stares, glances around his head to the room behind him. The open door seems to be an invitation for her and she sidesteps him, brushes past him and into his dark, dirty kitchen.
It's such a shock, not only seeing her there but also having her walk right into his house, that Haymitch doesn't move, doesn't turn, just stays staring at the air on his porch Matilda had so recently vacated.
He comes to his senses, spins on his heels and finds her examining the interior of the kitchen.
"You should clean," she tells him as she eyes the ever growing pile of garbage in the corner of the room.
"I wasn't expecting company," he tells her. It's the truth. He's never expecting company. "Normally the place is spotless."
A little smile forms on her lips and she nods at him, lets her foggy gaze travel around the room. "I imagine it is."
Haymitch comes in, kicks the door behind him closed before he remembers his blinds are shut and the room only has the most minimal of daylight fighting its way in. They haven't been opened in five years, not since his mother died.
Quickly, he flips on the light. The lone, naked bulb over his kitchen table blazes to life. He'd broken the elaborate cover that had protected it after Laurel died. It had scared Graeme and his mother had given Haymitch an almost physically pained look before packing up her youngest son and taking him back to their home in the Seam.
That was the night he'd realized his own mother didn't see him as her little boy anymore. Haymitch was a wild animal, like Wiress and all the other Victors, and his mother knew it. That was why she hadn't wanted to move herself and Graeme in with him. He still wonders if maybe he hadn't been so volatile they might've moved in with him and that maybe they would still be alive. The Capitol wouldn't burn one of its precious Victors' houses, but then, he supposes they would've just killed them, taken their revenge another way.
He shakes off the memory.
The lone bulb bathes the room in yellow light, castes the corners in odd shadows. Matilda comes off a little more colorful though. It makes the yellow of her dress a little more vibrant, her hair more golden, and her eyes darker, glittering.
She holds out her tin to him.
"You're supposed to bring a gift when you visit someone," she tells him. "It's some of the glass candy I was making."
Reaching out, he takes it from her, opens the lid and finds several chunks of hard, red candy.
"It's strawberry," she says, taking a step toward him. "Graeme told me you liked strawberries best."
The mention of his brother makes the annoying voice in his head pipe up. It tells him to be nice to Matilda or suffer the consequences.
"Thanks," he grunts as he takes the tin and carefully places it on the counter.
Matilda takes a few steps deeper into the house while his back is turned, cranes her neck through the opening leading into the living room. She falls back on her heels, turns back to Haymitch with her dully glowing eyes.
"You have cobwebs." She points through the opening, up to the ceiling on the other side.
He's aware of that. He doesn't care, but he is aware. Much like the mounting piles of garbage and the neverending mountains of clothing he's building in most of the rooms of the house, he feels they add to the ambiance.
"I like the spiders," he tells her. Which is also true. Those spiders are about the only creatures he hasn't decided are a complete waste of time. They don't judge him or ask for things, and they catch the flies. It's a kind of symbiotic relationship.
She nods, as though she might understand, then takes a few steps, glides out of the kitchen and into the living room.
Not really understanding what she's doing, and more than a little concerned that she might trip over something, Haymitch follows after her.
Her head is tilted up, examining the graceful vaulted ceiling.
Haymitch had picked the house because of it. He'd thought Laurel would like it, when she moved in, along with his mother and brother. After years of living with low slung homes, tiny cramped rooms, he'd thought the magnificent living room would've been nothing short of a dream.
She hadn't liked it though.
"It's too…much," she'd told him, looking a little overwhelmed at the apparent opulence of his new home.
He'd gotten mad at her, something he'll never forgive himself for her, and told her to just get out if she didn't like it. She had, slammed the door behind her and stomped off into the night.
They'd made up a few hours later, that's just how they'd been. Sometimes he thought they'd fought just to make up, because they enjoyed the fury of it, the heat and the sweat.
Matilda seems to like the arch of the ceiling, makes a slow circle on her toes as she smiles up at the wires sticking out from the center.
She stops and points up at the bare wires. "Someone's taken your light."
They had. During one of the Games, maybe two or three years ago, he'd forgotten to set the blasted alarm. Some opportunistic bastard had taken his lapse for all it was worth, broken in and taken what had appeared to be the most expensive and easily movable object in the house.
Haymitch had never turned it in to the authorities. He wasn't about to watch some poor bastard be beaten to death over a stupid chandelier.
"Yeah," he grunts. He scratches at the several days worth of stubble growing on his cheek.
"It's very beautiful," she sighs, running her pale hands over the back of the dusty couch. Her now dark eyes dance over the mantle to the fireplace. "Do you make popcorn in your fire?"
He has no idea what popcorn is, so he shakes his head.
A soft little smile turns up her lips. "I'll bring you some. I can help you clean and then we can pop it."
"I'd rather not," he mumbles, runs his hand over his tired eyes. He glances up at the enormous clock setting by the front door. It's hideous, chimes every hour on the hour. A 'gift' from the Capitol to remind him of each painful hour he's trapped in the beautiful tomb they've bestowed upon him.
He's a little stunned to see it's past six in the evening. Not that it matters to him. He has nothing but time on his hands. Sometimes he stays awake for days, other times he sleeps for just as long. This had been one of his sleeping days apparently.
Matilda must've come after the shop closed.
The sun is probably dying outside, dropping off the edge of the earth to sleep. It'll be dark soon and Matilda will have to walk home in it.
He's tempted to make her. It might discourage her from coming out again, everpossibly. Unfortunately, he remembers what Herschel had said just the other day, about his mother telling him that Haymitch was a gentleman and would look after Maysilee until the end. As much as he would like to teach Matilda a lesson about visiting, he can't.
Gesturing to the clock, he coughs.
"Uh, Matilda, it's kind of late."
She squints at the clock, tilts her head slightly. "It's only six."
"It's six fifteen and it's October," he points out. "Sunset is coming up."
Her lips press together in thought, then form a small 'o' when she works his words over in her head. She glances at the tightly closed windows and sighs. "I suppose you're right."
Hating himself for giving in to ghosts and old men, Haymitch manages to grumble out, "I can walk you home."
Matilda turns, her eyes grazing over the dusty and wasting entrails of his living room, until she's facing him again. Her soft features lift in another smile, bright, like the one she'd graced him with the other day when he'd told her she could visit.
He instantly knows he's made a horrible mistake.
#######
Matilda holds onto his arm the entire walk back to the edge of town. Just one of an increasing list of things he'd had to do for her just to get her out of his house.
First he'd almost had to put her in a pair of his boots. She'd claimed to have come with shoes, but her feet were completely bare. It had taken the better part of an hour to find the stupid things, which she'd kicked off on his porch. When he opened the door and tugged her out, he'd found the air much cooler. Her dress was pretty, but thin and fluttery, a summer sundress, not even remotely appropriate for a cool fall night. Cursing her and her lack of forethought, he'd stomped up the stairs, dug through the pile of clothes he'd been given during the last Games and found the hideous coat his stylist had forced on him. There's lipstick on the collar and he'd spilled something on it, probably expensive liquor, but otherwise it's in fair condition.
"Wear this," he'd thrust it at her, almost hitting her in the face with the sleeve.
She'd taken it, wrinkled her nose as she'd sniffed it. "Smells like smoke."
He shot her an agitated look. "Because I smoked in it."
"What did you smoke?"
If he knew he'd have gotten more. His memory of that night and for several days after is a fog, he'd blacked out. It was a welcome relief from the nightmares and guilt.
"Nothing you need to know about," he tells her gruffly, gesturing for her to put the coat on.
She does, slowly, then wraps one of her dainty arms around his and gives him a tug off the porch.
They're almost halfway there now. He can smell Mellark's Bakery, warm bread a rolls that used to make his stomach ache with hunger.
Kolach runs the place now. Haymitch had heard he'd married the banker's witch of a daughter, Eugenia, and had a brat now. Poor sap.
Matilda keeps pressing closer to his side, leaching off his warmth, despite the fact that he stiffens each time she does. She either doesn't notice or doesn't care.
When they finally reach the edge of the town he pulls her chilly little fingers from his elbow and takes a step back. He feels a bit like he's dumping an animal, and almost waves his hands at her and yells 'git' to shoo her off.
She stares at him for a few seconds, glows a pale white and silver under the half shadowed moon, then smiles. "Thank you."
He hadn't noticed, but she'd taken his hand back, has it pressed between her cold hands. She gives it a squeeze before she runs off, down the poorly lit road toward her family's shop.
#######
Haymitch drops off to sleep after downing the last of the expensive whiskey he'd finally managed to find.
He doesn't expect to wake until the next afternoon, and that suits him fine. Nothing for him to do anyway.
What he doesn't expect is to be woken at some unholy hour by vandals. He'd thought about being rob, trudged up all those stupid memories, when Matilda had come over, and that had drawn out some idiot. They'd started a fire too, by the smell of it.
His senses liven and he pulls his knife from under his pillow, crawls out of bed, and, carefully and quietly, opens the door. Crouching, he softly pads down the hall to the stairs. He immediately straightens when his living room comes into view.
It's bright, someone has opened the shades, not all the way, but enough that sunlight is spilling in. He can see dust floating in the air.
The bottle and filth that normally litter the floor are gone, swept up and taken away. All the dust, normally sticky thick on every surface, has been wiped, or more likely scrubbed, away. The only things left recognizable from the night before are the spider webs in the corners.
Perplexed by the country's strangest robbers, Haymitch quietly makes his way down the stairs, through the newly cleaned living room, and into the kitchen.
He'd apparently forgotten the alarm again.
Matilda is at the sink, scrubbing one of the many filthy pots he'd left on the floor ages ago. She's elbow deep in suds when she feels his eyes on her, turns with a bright smile at him.
"Good morning, Haymitch."
Her eyes widen slightly and her cheeks tinge pink before she jerks her head back to the sink. She continues to scrub at the pot.
Haymitch stares at her for a few seconds. It isn't until he stuffs his knife in the waistband of his pants that he realizes why she's blushing. He's only half-dressed, and not even the interesting half is showing.
Since she's the one breaking into his house she deserves to be a little embarrassed, so instead of going back upstairs to find a shirt, he walks to the sink, leans against the counter and stares at her.
"What are you doing in my house, Matilda?"
She keeps her eyes trained on the bubbles in the sink, doesn't even so much as glance over at him, when she speaks.
"You-you said-I mean-I told you I'd bring popcorn and help you clean, and you said you'd rather not." She chews her lip. "I thought you meant you'd rather not help clean and make the popcorn, so I came early to get it done before you got up." Her wide blue eyes slowly float up to his, her cheeks increasingly pink as they quickly glide over his bare upper body. "I got it wrong didn't I? You didn't want to make popcorn or clean with me."
If he had a heart he'd say she just stabbed it dead center. Her body seems to droop at the realization that she so badly misinterpreted him.
"I'm sorry." She pulls her hands from the soapy water, begins furiously wiping them on the tea towel. "I'm sorry. I always do this. I should've asked-"
She knocks a freshly cleaned bowl to the ground, shattering it into a million shards on the spotless tile floor. Tears spring to her eyes and she starts swatting them away, which only seems to make more fall, and harder.
"I'm s-sorry," she begins blubbering.
Her feet are bare again, Haymitch spots her shoes, neatly placed on a mat by his backdoor, and she almost steps in the broken glass as she tries to get to the broom on the other side of the room. The only thing that stops her is Haymitch catching her by the waist.
"Watch out!"
Matilda freezes against him, whether because he's got her pressed against his skin or because his shouting had frightened her, he doesn't know.
Taking a deep breath, he lowers his tone.
"I'm gonna let you go, but watch your feet, okay?" He doesn't need her bloody footprints trailed all over his kitchen or to have to carry her back to her father.
She nods and he lets her go. Her feet shuffle back, away from the glass and she takes the long way around to the broom.
He watches her, still sniffling and rubbing at her face, as she sweeps up the bowl.
"I'm sorry," she whispers again. "I'll go."
As he watches her drooping shoulders and hears her sloppy, wet sniffles, his non-existent conscience jabs him in the stomach.
"Matilda, uh, you didn't get it wrong." He's such a liar. "I just, you know, drink and I forgot."
Red-rimmed eyes slowly rise, meet his hopefully. "Really?"
Her lip is puckered and he wants more than anything to tell her that he's lying. That he just can't handle crying and can she please leave.
He doesn't though.
"Yeah." He glances over his shoulder, to the living room. "You did a nice job of it, sweetheart."
"You think?" She smiles. "I still feel like something is missing…"
Much as he'd like to tell her what's missing is mountains of filth he doesn't. He just picks up a towel and gestures to the sink. "We'll figure it out later. Let's just finish those dishes."
#######
Matilda force feeds him popcorn. She'd been afraid to use the fireplace. It isn't like her and her father's back at the shop, so she'd fired up his stove. It's never been used to his knowledge, and she apparently didn't know how to use it.
"I think it burnt a little," she tells him.
It had, and more than a little. He almost gags on it, but his mother's cooking was still worse.
She spends the afternoon working her way through his hallway and then into the bedrooms, tossing the molded and horrible smelling piles of clothing into trash bags. There's no point in trying to clean most of them, and he's always enjoyed driving the tailor in Town nuts.
Her hair gets progressively wilder, floating around her head in a pale cloud. She hums to herself as she scrubs and dusts, sweeps, and picks up every last bottle. There are more than a few broken ones, so Haymitch makes her put shoes on finally.
If his mother were there she'd tell him he'd found himself a pretty little maid. It wouldn't have been so bad, actually, when she isn't crying, Matilda isn't bad company. She reads, apparently quite a bit.
"I haven't got anything else to do," she tells him. They've been going through the little bookshelf in one of the guestrooms and she's apparently read the library's copies of every book in Haymitch's collection.
"Books are nice," she continues as she flips through one of the novels. "They're a nice little escape."
He takes the book from her after that, takes it to his room and considers reading it later.
By the time she reaches his room she's clearly exhausted. Haymitch has mostly stayed out of her way and she was a whirlwind of cleaning on her own anyways.
"Why don't we get you home, 'Tilda," he tells her as she reaches for the handle to his main bedroom. "You're tired."
Her mouth turns down and she shakes her head. "I'm fine. There's only this room and the bathrooms left."
She's practically falling asleep on her feet, and he wonders if she's ever worked as hard as she did cleaning his house in her life.
When she turns back to the door he puts his hand on the wood, keeping it firmly shut.
"If you clean everything tonight then what will you do tomorrow?"
Matilda's pale hair floats around her head, mixing with the dust in the air, as she tilts her head to look at him. "Tomorrow?"
He's opening a can of worms, letting her think he's friends with her, he can't havefriends. But the rest of the house smells like lemons and sunlight, so he might as well let her make his bedroom just as nice.