i.
This is the only place Effie wants to be, where his heartbeat is the only thing marking the passage of time and his breathing is the only music she will ever hear. This is where true peace lives, where nothing and no one can touch them, where they are the creators of life and death and everything in between.
Sometimes she thinks she can see that perfect world in the endless blue of his eyes. Distant seashores, lakes reflecting cloudless skies, lazy rivers with flowers on their banks, and all around, a people whose hatred is reserved for the violence of the past, the twisted entertainments of the former ruling class. In this place, their sins are forgiven, and they begin anew.
She comes close to that blameless existence when Seneca traces soft circles on her cheek and says, "After the Games this year, we should go away for a while, take a break from all of this."
Her earrings are not near enough for her to activate them and cloak them in a cocoon of perfect privacy, but they do not need it now. She understands. The demands of their respective jobs are bad enough. The work they do to fight against the institution they pretend to so fervently serve is exhausting in its own right. These moments together are a breath of fresh air, and wouldn't it be wonderful to have a whole day like this, or two days, or perhaps, if they are very lucky, a week?
"Yes, we should. They steal you away from me too often."
"The price we pay for success."
"This is success." She takes his hand and places it on her heart, his palm cool against her skin.
Something shifts in his eyes, a change in the tide, the waves pulling back to make room for something greater. "Some people go their whole lives without knowing this," he tells her, and she is transfixed, holding her breath, waiting.
But then the waters still, and he smiles, and the spell melts away. She breathes it in the air, tastes it on his lips.
This is freedom. This is what they work towards. This is what they wish for all of Panem. But for now, if they seek it, people may find it in moments such as this, in clear blues of never-ending depths, in flower petals on bright green grass, in the precious seconds of contentment that no power can take away.
ii.
"They won," Effie breathes, her grip on Haymitch's forearm tightening. She keeps her eyes on the screen as the hovercraft comes for Katniss and Peeta.
It can't be true. Surely someone will shoot one of them and leave only one victor standing. Surely they'll release a mutt or acidic rain. Surely Seneca has not so completely lost his mind as to allow two children to unintentionally trick him into letting them both go back home.
But it is true. She watches them get lifted inside the hovercraft and fly off into the distance; it's all the confirmation she needs.
To her side, both tributes' prep teams begin to clap and cheer, and Effie takes her cue from them, pushing away the thoughts of what this all means to celebrate the fact that both of her beautiful pearls have survived. She lets go of Haymitch's arm, stands, and joins in the chorus of cheers. She grabs Haymitch's hands, tugging him to his feet, and tells him, "They won! They both won!"
He forces a laugh, but in his eyes she reads the same misgivings she's trying desperately to suppress. It cannot be this easy. Something is happening behind the scenes that they are not seeing. Snow must be absolutely furious. The control room must be buzzing with chaos. Seneca—
Effie does not let herself think of him. Right now, she must play the ignorant, happy escort. She nods at Haymitch, saying, "I can hardly believe it either!" She signals to an Avox, tells him to get everyone a round of champagne, and pulls Haymitch over to where the rest of their team is celebrating. She kisses both of Cinna's cheeks, pauses a moment before hugging him so that he knows she is just as worried as he is. When the Avox comes back with a tray of fine glasses for them all, she leads them in a victory toast, their first for days to come.
Haymitch fields the call from the Gamemakers, nodding along at their instructions of where to be and when to be there. Effie breaks away from the celebrants to take notes as he repeats what he is told, and they go to work as soon as the call is ended.
These next days are difficult, and not only because of all the things that must be done. Neither she nor Haymitch can get through to their contacts within the circle of Gamemakers. But they must not dwell, and Effie does not allow herself to worry, not until the victory interview and the coronation have passed and she has seen Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch off at the train station.
On that day, she receives a message from Heavensbee telling her he would like to hand deliver a victory gift to her. She accepts, and in the afternoon of the day of the victors' departure, she adjusts one of her earrings as Heavensbee uncorks a bottle of wine in Effie's elegant kitchen.
"Tell me," she says to him. She already knows, but she cannot accept it, not when there is still the slightest possibility that she might be wrong.
Heavensbee finishes pouring them each a glass, sets the bottle down on the counter, and takes her hands. "I am so sorry, Effie. There was nothing we could do."
She feels her throat tighten and her heart twist, and she hasn't even begun to shake her head when tears spill from her eyes.
"He said to us all, before releasing the mutts, that he had been given an opportunity he couldn't miss," he continues, tightening his hold on her hands just the slightest bit. "We didn't know yet that they would survive, but when the beasts were sent out, he looked at me from across the room, and I understood that he fully intended to take the fall for all of us."
Her tears fall on their joined hands, and she lowers her head as her shoulders shake with barely suppressed sobs.
"He knew what he was doing, Effie, and he did it anyway. Katniss' burial of the girl from Eleven, the ensuing uprising—it's what we've been waiting for all these years—"
"Stop," she says, sniffing, gripping his hands as if she will slip away if she lets go. Lifting her gaze to his, she forces herself to smile. It comes out as a grimace, but that's just as well. She'd best save her smiles for later, when she must be at her professional best, giddy from her district's unprecedented double victory. "I understand."
She understands, but she doesn't have to like it.
"Just please tell me one thing." She waits until he nods, and she asks, "Would you have done the same if you had been in his place?"
He hesitates a moment, and she feels her heart rip apart. He is very nearly the leader of this underground effort, yet he would lack the bravery to make such a critical decision? She wants to kill him, wants to claw at his face with her long, topaz-studded fingernails until he can't see through the red in his eyes, can't taste or smell anything but the metallic tang of blood. Seneca may have been rash to do what he did, but he did it. He had sacrificed his life for something greater than him, greater than all of them. He had forsaken the promise of seeing the world for which they are working, and he had renounced the future he could have had with her.
And here stands Plutarch Heavensbee, hesitating.
"Yes," he says, after a second that, for Effie, has been a glimpse into eternity. "In such a moment as that, with so little time to think, and knowing all that we do—yes."
Nodding, she pulls back her hands. She lifts one to her face, brushing tears from her cheeks. The effort reminds her that this is all true, that the cause has directly claimed its first life, and she shudders again with the irrepressible force of her grief.
"Please go, Plutarch," she says, quiet but strong.
He says nothing more as he does so, and she stands there as if frozen to the spot until she hears the door shut and lock behind him. That's when her control snaps, a pitiful twig in a violent storm. She sinks to her knees and wraps her arms tight about her body and weeps, angry and fearful and alone, so impossibly, deeply alone.
This is the price to pay for their commitment to liberation, and surely, surely he will not be the last to go. Some unthinking part of her wants to run up to Snow with a knife aimed at his throat. Whether or not she manages to kill him, she'll be taken away. If she's lucky, no matter the result of her attack, Peacekeepers will shoot her on the spot. Surely it is better to die than to survive someone so dear.
But even as the thought focuses her pain, she knows she must not waste what Seneca has given them all. He has given his life so they might continue their work and shine a light upon this dark and desolate nation.
That will have to be enough to numb away the burning of the wasteland slowly expanding in her chest.
iii.
"Heavensbee told me."
Effie stops abruptly. They are on the path between Victors Village and the town, safe as can be and in broad daylight. This is the only chance Haymitch will have to talk to her alone until the Games, and given all that has happened—the uprisings, the new symbol, Snow's visit to Katniss a few days ago—he cannot wait that long.
"Yes," she says, and he has to admit, he's impressed at the smile she manages. The rest of her gives her away, stiff from head to toe as if she'll fall apart if she's not perfectly still. But her smile—it's camera ready. "I'm sure he'll make an excellent Head Gamemaker."
"I'm sorry," he says. He does not list why because it would take more time than they have here, but he is sorry for speaking ill of Crane. He is sorry for believing him to be another mindless Capitol dandy with a penchant for killing helpless children, for never stopping to consider, even after discovering where his allegiance lay, that he dipped his hands in their blood because so few others could. Heavensbee is a Gamemaker, too, after all, and Haymitch had stopped resenting him for his crimes years ago. But Crane had angered him far more deeply for reasons Haymitch does not understand, and because of that, Haymitch had crossed far graver lines than those Effie so often reminds him of.
"Thank you," she says, her smile wavering for just a moment, just enough time for him to see it and glimpse the depth of her grief.
He remembers, suddenly, the deaths of his mother and brother, of his girlfriend, three innocents caught up in the bare beginnings of a rebellion effort they might have dreamt of but never believed in. If anyone knows the agony of solitude, it's him. It may have been months since Crane's execution, but in Effie's hands, in how they grip her clipboard until her knuckles turn whiter than the paint on her face, it looks as if it has only been hours.
"We must not squander the opportunities given to us, Haymitch," she tells him, her smile fading as her tone softens and the glow of purpose in her eyes dims with the too immediate memory of what was. "We must not let anything happen in vain."
He nods, though he isn't sure she sees him. She must sense it, though, because she manages a broken smile, the most sincere grin he has ever seen her give. "Besides, nothing will come of my sadness. I can almost hear him saying so, that I must press onwards."
"That's right," Haymitch murmurs. Her hands shift on the clipboard, no doubt because her joints have begun to ache from the force they've exerted in her desperation to maintain control. He stares at her slender fingers and forces himself to stay as he is, to not display any sort of sympathy beyond what he already has, because she cannot even suspect what she doesn't know, what Haymitch knows, that Crane had consulted Heavensbee on the purchase of a ring only days before the Games had begun.
Haymitch tells himself he is keeping Crane's final secret solely out of a wish to keep Effie from shattering beyond repair. Why else could it be, really, but to ensure that she will be able to continue doing as splendidly as she has done for the resistance?
"It was foolish to think we would all make it out unscathed," she whispers, and he swears she is telling herself, not him. Certainly he already knows this, but she with her charmed life, she who has never known this sort of pain—these words are a balm for her own wounds. His have long since scarred.
"It's never wrong to hope," he offers, a meager piece of comfort.
His words seem to wake her, and she nods, inhaling sharply, straightening again. "Everyone in the Capitol is so excited to see Katniss and Peeta again, you have no idea!" She smiles at him, vibrant again. She will fool everyone except him, because he has seen the change in her eyes, how the brilliant blue of them is paler now for the last piece of innocence that has been ripped away from her.
He follows her as she goes on about the Victory Tour, discussing the schedule with him as if it is the single most important thing in the world. It's the only certain thing either of them has right now, that much is true, because she is pulling herself together, and he is much more involved in the resistance than even he imagined he would be in his lifetime.
Crane has given them something unspeakably precious. To waste it would be to do his sacrifice the greatest dishonor and commit an unforgivable offense against those who mourn him.
And Haymitch already has enough guilt on his shoulders.