"Heaven bend to take my hand,

I've nowhere left to turn.

I'm lost in those I thought were friends,

To everyone I know.

Oh, they turn their heads, embarrassed,

Pretend that they don't see

That it's one misstep, one slip before you know it.

And there doesn't seem a way to be redeemed."

"Fallen" – Sarah McLachlan

Effie learned early in her life that any expression of her fears and anxieties would not be tolerated, and that she had to put on a smile and be pleasant even when her psyche felt as though it could shatter like glass.

She never seemed to have nightmares after that early one about Snow. When she did, they were silly little things that hardly counted, dreams about being naked in class or a boyfriend breaking up with her on live television, and an especially vivid one before her first reaping about having her monthlies come on while wearing a white suit and having to go up in front of the whole of District Twelve with a spreading crimson stain on her skirt because there was no time to change.

Effie had almost forgotten how to dream, how to be afraid, and so she had been even less prepared than most for the horror visited upon her in the Capitol's prison.

Fear is her constant companion now. Endless months of being beaten and starved, of having needles rip into her veins to shock her system with strange drugs, have re-educated her in terror.

Her dreams are nothing but nightmares and she doesn't know how to turn them off. Sometimes the old dreams come back in new and horrifying ways, but mostly she dreams about her jail cell, her captors, or the room in which she was taken to be strapped down to a table, injected with tracker jacker venom, and interrogated for hours. Tonight Peeta Mellark is the star of her nightmares as she remembers an incident in which she was dragged from her cell and taken to a room where she was stripped naked and he was forced to watch, restrained and unable to help, while a Peacekeeper sliced her skin until her blood was dripping onto the floor beneath her. As the knives slash through her already-abused flesh, all she can focus on are Peeta's eyes, wide and blue and filled with tears.

She wakes up wailing, hurriedly checking her body for gashes and festering wounds and then leaping into her shower to wash away the shame that has been ingrained into every fiber of her soul. She sits underneath the hot spray, her arms wrapped around her legs, curling into a ball and rocking herself while humming an old lullaby that someone used to sing to her as a child. She tries to place the voice that originally would have sung to her—her father never sang, and her mother never set foot in her nursery. Effie had had a governess until about the age of five, when the woman had been accused of stealing silverware and dismissed. It must have been the governess who sang to her. Effie cannot figure out why this is important except that it gives her something to think about other than her dreams and the traumatic events that form the fabric of them.

You had a life before all of this happened; you can pick up the pieces and have a life again. She repeats this like a mantra but cannot convince herself of it no matter how many times the words play in her head.

She steps out of the shower and into a bathrobe and then she sits on the edge of her bed. Her short blonde hair is wild around her face, but her hairbrush is across the room and she doesn't feel like getting up. Her after-bath ritual used to consist of an array of hair care products and skin creams, but she doesn't see the point in all of that now. She never gets out anymore. No one sees her, ever.

Effie Trinket, who used to be such a social butterfly and always knew the latest gossip that fashionable Capitol circles had to offer, now has no friends.

Many of the people she used to know were her colleagues in the Hunger Games. They're all dead now—those who weren't killed by Snow were executed under Coin. She thinks briefly of Seneca Crane, remembering him not as Head Gamemaker in his tailored suit and fancifully designed facial hair but as the little boy who used to pull her pigtail and chase her around the playground.

Many more of her friends died during the occupation of the Capitol, and those who are living won't talk to her anymore. She was jailed by the Capitol and almost executed by the rebels, so no one is sure what side she was or is on, but everyone saw her on television, hovering in the background the day that Katniss Everdeen killed President Coin. All of her old Capitol friends, even people who were close to her parents and have known her since before she could toddle, believe her to be a traitor.

Effie reaches over to her bedside table, pulling a drawer open and fumbling around until her hand closes on the sleek little bottle of pills. She examines them in the lamplight. The doctor assured her that this time the medicine would work, that she'd be able to sleep, but he was wrong. Effie concludes that he's a quack who doesn't know what he's talking about, just like the last one. She rattles the bottle, considering the little capsules of synthetic sleep.

When she was fifteen, her father went to sleep forever. Effie wonders if she could follow in his footsteps, smother her life with chemicals just like Daddy did. She shakes her head, goes to the bathroom, emptying the bottle into the toilet and flushing. She's too much of an insomniac for eternal sleep.

Without thinking, she walks back to her room and picks up the phone. She doesn't even have to look to find the right keys; she used to have to dial this number all the time to make sure the man to whom it belonged would be awake and at least able to pass for sober whenever she arrived in his district. His voice on the other end of the line is groggy and he curses at her without even knowing who he's speaking to. He seems to snap awake when he hears her voice, though it hardly sounds like her voice at all because she's so choked by tears.

"Hey, sweetheart, I can't understand a damn thing you're saying. Calm down," he says, "Calm down. What's going on?"

She sobs on and on about the Capitol, about the disapproving stares from every direction and the people who yell obscenities at her on the streets, the doctors who won't listen and the friends who've turned their backs on her, about the nightmares and the pills. He listens to her ramble patiently, and when she's done, she can hear him sigh.

"You've got to get out of there, Eff," he says.

"I can't. I've got no one anymore, nowhere to go. I'm trapped."

"You've got me," he replies. When she doesn't respond, he goes on, his nervousness obvious in his voice, "You've got Katniss and Peeta. They're here in Twelve, too. You should come and see us."

Effie closes her eyes and thinks. Katniss and Peeta. Would either of them really welcome her into their home? She has her doubts about Katniss, but knows that Peeta would, if only to be kind. She shakes her head, knowing she could never impose on either of them. She has no idea what state they're in, but suspects they're probably just as fucked up as she is, if not worse. She knows, too, that their emotional trauma is all her fault. If she hadn't picked their names, if only she could have pulled any other slips of paper but the ones with Primrose Everdeen and Peeta Mellark written on them…

"Princess?" his voice interrupts her reverie, "You there?"

"Yes, I'm here."

"What do you think, about taking a little vacation in Twelve?"

"I…" her voice falters, "I don't know…"

"Just say yes, Effie." Effie says nothing.

"Look, I'm not letting you stay in that fucked-up place by yourself, especially since you just told me you've got an endless supply of pills that you're thinking of shoveling all in your mouth at once. If you don't agree to come voluntarily, I'll get on the next train and drag your ass home with me. I guarantee neither of us will like that."

Effie almost smiles at his gruffness. At least there's one thing that hasn't changed.

"Yes," she says, "I'll come."

She talks to him a bit longer before he finally grumbles about needing sleep and hangs up. She immediately flies into action, breaking out her suitcase and trying to decide what to pack. It would be a little easier if she knew how long she was going to be staying—Haymitch only said "until we're both on the point of murdering each other." By the time dawn begins to break through her tightly-shuttered window, Effie has two bags ready to go and is out the door, heading for the train station.