4.
"Faster!" Effie urged him as if he was just dawdling for laziness' sake. She was swimming backwards, keeping her eyes on the fog slowly making its way toward them.
"I can't go faster." he panted, spiting some water. Swimming and talking at the same time weren't as easy to do as she made it look. "Get out of here!"
A glance over his shoulder told him it would only be a minute or so before they would be run over by the fog. He knew exactly how it would go. The chemicals in the smog would paralyze them, they wouldn't be able to keep themselves over the water line and they would drown. It would be painful and ugly.
"Go!" he insisted. "Effie, don't be such a stubborn bitch and go!"
"It figures you would keep insulting me as we are about to die." she retorted. It sounded so detached he wondered if she was still in shock. She was terrified, he could see it plainly, but there was also a sort of cold aloofness to her. "Do you think it's like a wave?" Her brow creased into a frown. "I think it is. I think I can see the beach behind the fog and it looks clear..."
They were almost at the Cornucopia. But then what? The others were long gone, being wiser than she was, well on their way to reaching a safer portion of the arena. Reaching the Cornucopia wouldn't help – if he reached it at all.
He pushed harder with his arms and his legs but he lacked technique and swiftness. She stopped moving and waited for him to catch up with her.
"Effie." he begged. "Effie, please, go."
She could still make it. She was quick in the water, she must have spent hours in a pool when it had been fashionable to do so after Finnick's victory, she was fit and young... And he absolutely refused to see her die in that fucking arena.
Instead of listening, she caught his arms and forced him to face her. All he could do was kick his legs to keep his head over the water, too aware that the fog was a wall about to slam into them any second now.
They were close, close enough that he considered kissing her again, just for the hell of it. It would be a good death. She squeezed his arms with urgency, her fake nails digging painfully into his flesh.
"We need to dive." she told him.
It wasn't what he had been expecting.
"Why?" he mocked. "You want to drown quicker?"
She waved that away with obvious irritation. "Fog doesn't reach underwater, have you never paid attention in class? If it's a wave, we need to dive and wait for it to pass!"
He opened his mouth, either to tell her it was a brilliant idea or to declare their cause was doomed anyway – he wasn't sure which yet – but he didn't have time to say anything. The fog was there, its tendrils dangerously licking at his arm and he simply gave a brisk nod, gasped as much air as he could and dove.
She never let go of him. They clutched each other, trying to remain underwater and not to waste any oxygen with unnecessary movements, trying to guess how long it would take for the fog to pass... Haymitch's sight was blurry and the salt water stung his eyes but he needed to see even though there wasn't much to watch apart for Effie's face, so close to his, her eyelids shut tight, her nose wrinkled, her hair forming a sort of floating halo around her head...
How long did they remain like that? A minute? Her eyes opened suddenly in panic and she started kicking as if to move up but Haymitch wouldn't let her, fighting to keep her where she was, knowing it hadn't been long enough that it would be safe to surface. When bubbles started escaping her mouth and she clawed at his arms to get free, he did the only thing he could think of. He shared whatever oxygen he had left by crashing his lips against hers and forcing her mouth open.
It wasn't an efficient way of sharing oxygen.
They both broke the surface with sudden gasps, coughing water when they weren't trying to get air back into their lungs, as painful as it was.
Neither of them started screaming in agony before drowning. A look confirmed the fog wave was passing over the Cornucopia.
"Seems like you were right." he panted.
"Don't always sound so surprised by that." she retorted.
The fog dispersed after it had reached the Cornucopia, leaving them free to swim to the small island. The others were anxiously waiting on the shore, on the other side of the arena, and waved at them in obvious relief as soon as they spotted them. Effie waved back with an almost hysterical grin. Haymitch simply collapsed against the side of the metal structure.
"You're hot?" he asked.
"Haymitch!" she rebuked. "Now is not the time for your crude comments!"
"Not a comment, sweetheart. Genuine question." He rolled his eyes but couldn't help the smirk. Call it post-near-death syndrome but he felt entitled to a bit of leering and if it hadn't particularly struck him on Jo and Katniss, that jumpsuit was very tight. "Although..."
"Haymitch." she warned, turning back to him, her hands on her hips.
"Can't help it." he snorted. "I'm not blind." He waved at the general area of her face. "I like you better without all that crap."
"Well, I like you better sober." she deadpanned, before pulling on the collar of the jumpsuit with a groan. "It is ratherhot."
"Now you're only trying to turn me on." he teased. The glare he got in return was answer enough. And it was hot. Stifling even. It hadn't been like that the day before. The arena had been hot, true, clammy, but... When night had started to fall it had become chilly and if he judged by the sun, night couldn't be very far away. "I don't like this. Let's get back to the others before the other shoe drops."
He didn't quite fancy the idea of taking another swim but he would rather join the rest of the group in case something happened. He could rest later. The feeling of foreboding he felt couldn't be good.
She must have shared some of his concerns because she headed to the water before he even moved. She stepped back abruptly with a wince.
"The water is too hot." she declared with a touch of panic.
"What?" he frowned. He crouched next to the water edge, dipped a finger and immediately regretted it. It wasn't exactly unbearable but it was hotter than a hot bath had to be to be comfortable. And the temperature only seemed to be increasing.
"Do you think it might be a reaction to the fog?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Or another Gamemaker's trick. I don't know, sweetheart, but we're not going in there."
"I rather thought you would say as much." she cringed.
They sat in the small shade the Cornucopia offered and they waited. They remained silent like they rarely ever were. If they weren't screaming at each other, she was usually happy to fill their time with chatter.
It became obvious very fast that they weren't out of trouble just yet.
A first bubble ripped the surface of the water, then another and soon enough it wasn't just hot or stifling, it was impossible to breathe. The water was boiling as if the arena was nothing more than a pan and yet the water level remained even. He could see, in the distance, that the others had sought shelter at the edge of the jungle. They appeared to be having dinner, something Katniss had hunted down probably.
Haymitch was a little too aware that the Gamemakers could decide to make the island spin at any moment.
"Are they trying to cook us alive?" Effie asked.
"You're awfully blasé about everything." he commented.
"Would you prefer it if I screamed in terror and collapsed in tears? Because I am itching to do just that." she replied and that was the end of that. Fish started to wash on the shore of the small island and she kicked one of them dubiously with her boot. "Do you think they are safe to eat?"
He shook his head. "I wouldn't risk it."
"Alright." she accepted easily enough.
They soon shuffled away from the Cornucopia. The metal was starting to heat up and between the structure and the steam it was really getting difficult to breathe. After half an hour, Haymitch stripped out of his jumpsuit, not caring at all about dignity anymore. Effie chided him but only resisted ten minutes more before doing the same thing.
She was gorgeous and he wished he had been in a shape to appreciate it. As it was, he didn't even manage a gibe faced with the black sports bra and matching panties. He just closed his eyes, lying down on the unforgiving hot sand, waiting for the inevitable heat stroke to come.
Breathing was hard and he felt awful. He could feel a headache developing behind his eyes, he was nauseous and he couldn't quite lick his chapped lips because his mouth was dry...
"I think Cinna and Portia are dead." she whispered at some point. "They never came back after the launch."
"What happened out there?" he asked.
She didn't answer at once, it was several minutes before he felt fingers brushing his. It was too hot to hold hands and it wasn't something he was fond of anyway. He still found himself turning his palm upwards so she could entwine their fingers. He owed it to her to comfort her if nothing else. It was his fault she was in that shit to begin with.
"Cinna and Portia never came back. Peeta was nervous but he wouldn't tell me what was happening." she explained. "I don't think he even quite knew himself to be honest. Then he simply vanished, I couldn't find him anywhere. I was weary at first but... Well, Peacekeepers kindly asked me to follow them to the Head Gamemaker's office who wasn't Plutarch Heavensbee anymore although it hadn't been announced yet and it is sufficient to say I found myself quite distracted from that mystery."
He squeezed her hand. "What did they want with you?"
"Information, I think." He heard her try to swallow but if her throat was as parched as his was, it didn't come as such a surprise that she didn't manage it. "It doesn't matter, they quickly ascertained I knew nothing. It wasn't exactly pleasant."
"What happened to Heavensbee? Do you know?" he insisted.
There was a long silence before she sighed. "He followed in Seneca's footsteps."
Dead, then.
He wanted to feel sad about it but he had lost entirely too many friends those last few days and he might very well be on his way to the grave himself so he estimated he didn't have time to grieve properly and pushed the feelings down.
"And Peeta?" he asked.
"I honestly have no idea." she confessed. "I am sunburned. My skin isn't meant to be so exposed..."
"Night will fall soon." he promised. Hopefully. If that wasn't another rule change from their new friend Head Gamemaker Torenson.
The water stopped boiling before night fell.
It didn't matter much either way, they were both red as lobsters and feeling so sick, they didn't make any attempt at getting dressed or at moving. They remained on their back, staring at the quickly darkening sky, feeling as if they had just been steam cooked.
"I've never seen stars this bright before." she mused when the night was dark enough that the stars and the moon started peeking out.
"A bit extreme, going in an arena for stargazing, sweetheart." he joked weakly.
"I'm thirsty." she complained, reaching out to test the water temperature. "It's still too warm. And I'm too tired, I don't think I will make it to shore."
"We'll rest for a while, yeah?" he replied, closing his eyes again. "We'll try in a while."
A while stretched into a hour. When Panem's sigil appeared, they had yet to move.
"That's going to be a long one." he mumbled.
And long it was.
The first face to appear was Gloss, quickly followed by Cashmere – which was news to them – and by the face of a stranger, a man in his fifties, marked with a District One and the words HT over his head.
"I think it's their father." Effie frowned.
There was another stranger in Two, probably the kid Prim had dubbed to be chubby.
"Enobaria's younger brother if I'm not mistaken." his escort helpfully added. He wondered if she knew the ancestry tree of everyone involved in the Games. It wouldn't have surprised him. She never forgot a face and she was good at keeping tabs. "What do you think happened?"
"Best guess?" he hesitated. "Cashmere got Enobaria's brother by accident and Enobaria killed her. Her father tried to retaliate and got himself killed for his troubles."
They watched the rest in silence. There were no other surprises there but he had to catch Effie up on what she had missed while she was otherwise busy waiting to "volunteer". Panem's sigil appeared once more and then they were left to stare at the night sky again.
"It is cooler now." she declared eventually.
There was a soft splashing sound and, soon, he was drenched with water. He wasn't expecting it and he cursed, sitting up to defend himself. She didn't relent though. She wasn't happy until they were both soaked in an attempt to "cool their bodies down". He scolded her about possible shock but she was determined to have it her way.
"We should go back to the others." she suggested, chewing on her bottom lip. She gave the beach where the others had set camp a longing gaze.
"Yeah, I'm sure they miss us very much." he chuckled with some bitterness. "I saw how they rushed back to help when we were in trouble."
It was unfair, of course. He wouldn't have wanted any of them to come back anyway, not for him at least, but they could have stopped Effie from diving back.
The semi-darkness didn't prevent him from seeing the disapproving pout on her lips. "They are our friends, Haymitch."
He doubted very much that Johanna would have consented to be called her friend but they had certainly all known each other for long enough to warrant the term.
He went back to sit against the Cornucopia, keeping his eyes away from her face, unwilling to see the pain his words would cause.
"You're in the arena now, sweetheart." he reminded her without any gentleness. "You have no friends in the arena, only allies and those usually have an expiration date." He heard her opening her mouth to argue but he didn't give her time to speak. "They have other priorities than you or me, Effie. And that's good, I have my priorities too. But don't expect them to act like your friends anymore. That's over. No friendship outlives the arena."
She was silent for a moment and then she sat next to him, closer than he would have liked given that they were still both in their underwear.
"I am still your friend." she argued. "And you are still mine."
"That's different. You're my token." he countered.
She sighed. She drew her legs closer to her chest and propped her chin on her knees, watching the dark water, lost in her thoughts.
She was keeping it together much better than he had expected her to. He was surprised she hadn't become hysterical yet. But, he figured, she was a very good actress and if she had given to theatrics and panic, she would have given them exactly what the Gamemakers were after : comic relief. An escort in the Games? How utterly absurd. The audience must have been waiting for her to lose it from the first second she appeared on screen.
He was proud of her, he realized.
Proud and sorry.
Because he suspected there was only one reason she was there at all. To punish him. Maybe they had caught the stolen moment before the interviews and extrapolated that they had managed to keep an affair from the public eyes all these years. It had truly been just a kiss though. She had been upset because of Katniss' wedding dress – because of everything really – he hadn't been particularly overjoyed by the prospect of walking back on Caesar's tributes stage... She had been struggling to keep the tears at bay and... He had just kissed her. Spur of the moment. Unplanned. He hadn't think it through, he had just acted, thinking he would probably die the following day so what the hell...
And someone must have seen.
There had always been rumors – there were always rumors about mentors and escorts – that kiss probably was everything they needed to confirm it.
"It's my fault if you're here." he admitted after a little while.
She turned her head to look at him, resting her cheek on her knees. "How so?"
"The kiss..." he started but she waved him off.
"I know you are quick to blame yourself but it has hardly anything to do with that." she declared. "I publicly chose a side. I chose the children, you. We are a team." She stretched her legs in front of her and leaned back against the Cornucopia, their shoulders brushed. "I don't blame you."
"I do." he snorted.
"When don't you?" she joked without any humor.
The air had cooled down and they were starting to shiver with the abrupt change in temperature. She reached for her jumpsuit and he was almost sorry to see her get dressed again but when she tossed his at his face he followed her lead. He settled back against the Cornucopia but she lied down to stare at the stars. He wondered if it was truly the first time she saw them properly. After a few minutes, she shuffled closer and used his thigh as a pillow.
He hesitated, his hand freezing in mid-air, and then started petting her hair slowly. He had never seen her without a wig before and he didn't know if he was surprised or not that she was blond. It suited her somehow. The curls were tangled and full of sand but they still felt soft.
"Why did you do it?" she whispered eventually. "Kiss me, I mean."
He tried to swallow but his parched throat wouldn't comply.
"I needed to know." he confessed with some reluctance.
"Needed to know what?" she frowned.
He mulled on it for a moment and then shrugged, deciding that impending death was reason enough for honesty. He wasn't entertaining the thought that he would win the Quell. He didn't want to win the Quell. All he wanted was to keep as many of his friends alive as possible, that would have to be enough. "How you tasted like."
That seemed to render her speechless.
"It was a horrible kiss." she stated when she recovered.
"Yeah." he agreed, chuckling despite himself. "It was."
Tears, franticness, lack of liquor and gold lipstick that tasted like glitter didn't make for a good kiss.
He continued petting her hair and she continued mapping the stars with her eyes.
"Human tokens are meant to be precious." she observed after a while. "Cashmere and Gloss' father, Enobaria's brother, Finnick's girlfriend, Katniss' sister... They are meant to be... the most important person in a tribute's life."
"Yeah." he said flatly.
He hoped she wasn't trying to get a confession out of him because on that front he was confused. He didn't quite know what she meant to him aside from the fact that she was precious to some extent. A friend, if nothing else, and he had too few of those. And, if he was honest, she had been a little more than a friend for some time now...
"They made a mistake then." she hummed. "They should have sent Peeta to you."
His hand stilled in her hair.
Peeta was the logical choice, they had all thought it would be him.
It would have been different if the boy had been in her place though – for one, he would probably have drowned earlier but that wasn't the point. He loved Peeta just like he loved Katniss but had the boy been there it would have been about the kids not about him. Protect Katniss for Peeta, protect Peeta for Katniss. And Peeta was far from being helpless, he could hold his own – not to mention he was still angry with Haymitch because he had volunteered. It would have been different. Human tokens couldn't win, nobody said they had to die, he could have made sure that Katniss, Prim and Peeta got out of there alive regardless of his own fate. He would have aimed to do that even. And it would have been all about the kids.
He wouldn't have felt the crushing dread he felt at the knowledge that while resourceful, Effie wasn't made to be in the wild. He wouldn't have been scared the others would turn their backs on her and leave her behind at the first sign of danger because she didn't belong with any of them. She was part of the team, yes, but for all her pretty speeches earlier, Katniss had left her without a single glance back. If Haymitch died, Effie would be left to fend for herself. That was the difference.
"Making you my token was the only way to make it personal, sweetheart." he objected.
She wasn't watching the sky anymore, she was staring right at him. "Am I precious to you, then?"
"You're a pain in my ass." he deadpanned. "But one I don't mind so much."
She laughed. It was so unexpected and ridiculous, it brought a smirk to his lips.
He could tell the noise had caught Katniss' attention on the shore. She was keeping watch for the others who had settled a while earlier. He ignored the girl for now, content to make the most of that short moment of amusement.
"I think you are the king of unromantic declarations." she grinned, her eyes sparkling in mischief. "And do mind your language, would you?"
"See?" he scowled. "Pain in my ass."
She rolled her eyes – an unladylike habit she had most likely picked up from him.
"For what it's worth..." she replied. "You would be my human token too."
He wasn't sure if it was a good or a bad thing.
No cliffhanger and an extra long chapter today because I am very nice ;) I hope you like this chapter and that it answers some questions you may have about the context. What did you think? What do you think is in store for them next?
I will start publishing a new chaptered story in 8 parts on Monday titled "Running Out Of Time", so... Check it out, maybe? If you'd like :p