Burnt bread

Burnt bread IV

Author: Howlynn
Realm: The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Story Title: Burnt Bread
Summary: Haymitch has fallen for this kid just a little. Will history repeat itself?
Character/Relationships: Haymitch/Peeta

I Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

I watch him sleep. I am going to lose this goddamned kid. Serves me right for caring, like a little teen fool. I am Abernathy, the one who cares about nothing. God, did I fuck myself this time. With both of them. I admit it was the girl with the slug personality that got to me first. She is like looking at a fucking mirror. I can't always decide about her. Sometimes I could kill her. Like now.

Peeta the boy with the plan. He's insane, sly, stubborn to the death and so beautiful he takes my breath away. Well he isn't very pretty right this moment, but that's only his carcass that is damaged. Oh he's got some deep wounds inside too but I think he must be one of the bravest men I ever met. Boy, man, hell he's both.

His hell and mine aren't so far away from each other. He uses humor to survive just like I do. The difference is his humor is sweet and kind to others for the most part. Mine hates everyone with equal panache.

I don't hate him, yet. I will when he comes back to haunt me for what I have to do to the girl if he leaves. I will play that card last. I will describe every horrid thing they will do to her and I will be as vulgar and cruel as I can be. I will wax on at how I will enjoy breaking her in, hinting that I intend to ride her like a cowboy. I wonder if he will even know what spurs are. I will tell him I will have her trained into an obedient submissive capitol pet before his grave dirt goes flat. That ought to eat at his soul, no matter how bad he thinks life is.

If I know him, and I think I do, he will stay for her. He's known such cruelty; surely he will save her again. I hold that last card up my sleeve. He will hate me, but he will have to stay and save her from that.

I hope the idiot girl will come around. I have to keep him alive to give her time though. She can't be expected to just leap into joy at finding out that her life will never belong to her. Hell her only hope is to love him. They want this sappy stupid story of redeemed sweethearts in the capitol. They want to use the two of them to spark belief that all is well with Panem. It will make people believe that the capitol is a mostly benevolent force of good intentions upon their lives. But only if these two will play.

The other side is equally grubby in their seduction and manipulation of the story. They want them to spark the rebel cause. They, correction, we, want them to be used just as heinously. Me. I will use them. My side. My mess. My fault. My job to keep both sides from destroying them until they can be styled, and presented like shame, as tributes to my games. My arena. My big ideas.

My two little rebels. Whether they live or die doesn't make a damned bit of difference so long as they do it together. Martyrs or married, they are only symbols for the rest of us monsters to hide behind. There was a place in district ten called Texas once. Katniss and Peeta are our Alamo. Our beacons of tragic remembrance and a bonfire of lies to rally around.

Oh it was so easy for me to put them in that place. It was so easy for me to justify. I was saving them. I was bringing them home to live happily ever after. I was the good guy, the mentor, the great savior. If I just hadn't cared about them I could still be filling my endless bottle of don't-give-a-shit with those lies.

But they have broken me like a love sick puppy. Don't piss in the plants, Haymitch. Yes, my sweetheart, bad ole Haymitch will be your good doggie. Bad old Haymitch will stay sober for you. Bad old Haymitch will roll over and offer his belly. Bad old Haymitch will defend you to the death and never expect a table scrap of kindness in return. Bad old Haymitch will turn on his own pack and his own kind to offer you a real life and a real chance.

And then what? My sweetheart will kick me when I put my stinky old head in her hand and ask for a scratch on the ear. She will put me out in the winter, forget to feed me, and I will watch and lick my wounds and love her still. Haymitch will wag his tail and hope until she puts him in the ground and sheds a tear that he was just a good old mutt of a hound. And if that is the outcome, it will still be the most perfect thing I ever thought to do. I'm as pathetic as I sound. I know it. But I don't care.

Because I do care so damned much about them both.

I should have never fucked him. I was drunk. He is beautiful. I'm a selfish bastard. That is all it took for me to fall into a huge pile of foolish. Shocked me that he knew so damned much. Hurt me most of all. Hurts me now so sharply I can barely control myself from killing the bastards. Finnick Odair all over again from my hearts pain meter.

The difference is Finnick occurred in the capitol and there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it. All I could do for him was help, the only way I could. With Peeta I can stop it. I can give him vengeance. I can't protect him from so many things and yet this one thing is in my power to fix and the stubborn little death magnet won't let me.

He wants to destroy himself over his little fairy tales of romance. Well I do understand now that, that in fact, is not his only relevant situation that has brought about his passion with his own demise, but it's damned sure is the swing vote. I can't hold him here. I don't matter enough to him. His poor little heart is so full of her that I don't even register on his love-o-meter.

If I don't figure out something, I will be searching the tracks for his pale little chunks of brain jelly and his blackened bits of stinking bowel. That was how I found so much of Twander, damned his soul, when he pulled his best joke ever on me.

I would follow the smell of shit and blood and the sound of flies and I used a set of my mother's good vegetable tongs to dig in the gravel, grass and leaves and pick up the sticky bits of him as I screamed like a lunatic and begged him not to leave me to what he'd finally escaped. They said it was an accident. They reported that he was drunk and never felt a thing. That was the first year I heard that Haymitch Abernathy was turning into an alcoholic. I relished the comparison. We should all have goals in life and I found mine.

Peeta asked me just now, if it was like this with my own mentor. I told him nothing of any consequence, but my voice and my touch soothed him to rest. How do I tell him the real parts?

No, he didn't take me to his bed. He cleaned me up and called victor services for me every time they did this and worse to me. He held me and blocked the world for me and put me back together when my two weeks of imagined victory were over. Stood by me, holding my head as I peered at all the boxes and wouldn't cry in front of the town. He got me drunk, and fed me painkillers for my first capitol party and he cried all the times I refused shed a tear. All the times I held it all in like burning dysentery, Twander cried for me. He loved me.

I worshiped him. He was all I had and the son of a bitch knew that when he left me. He proved to me that day that I was not worth love. I wasn't worth another moment of his time and he tumbled into my nightmares, and I walked the damned tracks crying for him.

I swore I would never do that easy thing. I swore I would live every last torment just to be a bigger ass by surviving then he was by giving up on me. I promised once that I wouldn't give up. I hoped I could keep it. This damned boy. If I have to walk the tracks for him, will I be able to make the twenty-two miles back with any bits of sanity left. I walked out of the district with a bag and the peacekeepers threatened to shoot me on the border. I opened the bag and they let me pass. They saw it in my eyes that nothing could make me care if they did.

When I walked back through, I had found seventy two pounds of him and a wild puppy trying to gorge itself on Twander. It growled at me, but I tamed the damned thing. For four years, that stupid dog was my life. He was what I came home to, what I loved. He slept in my bed and padded next to me when I would hunt. He was just a big old dog who peed on the capitols pristine flower beds in front of my house. He had consumed part of my mentor and my simple shattered mind felt he was a message from my mentor, a gift. A consolation prize of the purest form of his love.

Baxter chewed my expensive capitol shoes and left giant turds in remarkably funny places that seemed to be lodestones for the shoes of peackeepers and a mayor's wife whose sister I had held in the hunger games as she died. She had it in her head that I was a nice person and she owed me her misplaced affections. She eventually got tired of scraping dog shit off her delicate shoes and scraped me off her delicate heart. The mayor worshiped the lovely girl I suspect, but can't prove, should have a photograph of my mother. After all, hair color aside, she is her spitting image.

No Peeta, sweetest boy. It wasn't like this. I could never live up to Twander. He protected me and loved me in a much more pure and descent way. He would never have betrayed me by seducing me. I am an unredeemable dirtbag compared to my own mentor. He would be ashamed of me. He would probably put me out of your misery just on principle.

But, when you hate me one day, and I know you will, just know I would not betray you by leaving you unspeakably defenseless to them on purpose either. He left me. He left me to the wolves and banished me to a deeper ring of hell then I will ever allow you to see, my sweet lover, my sweet soul. I may be selfish and I may be cruel, drunk, useless and everything they all say about me, but I will never give up on you. I will never be the one to teach you that nothing in the world can love you. I can't promise I can take it if you leave me too, but I will never leave you. I will try for her, but I am pretty sure you will be my end. If you are, you little one legged lush, you were worth it.

Live darling boy. Please live. Live this time. Believe my lie. Then live on.

In my arms he stirs, his lips curl into a faint smile, as if he can hear my thoughts. I'm so sorry, Peeta. I will make them pay for every sadness they handed you last night. I am good at things like that. I can't say all the things I need to say to you, but I can give you some peace. I am worthless when it comes to confessing my secrets, but unspoken doesn't mean non-existing. I love you and her more than life. That isn't even worth saying to you. Who cares if a cockroach loves fine art.

I can't even imagine where to begin explaining myself to you. I had a dog once Peeta. He ate my mentor and I didn't hold it against him. I brought him home and loved him. He was my best friend and the only thing I had in the whole world. He loved me. He really did. I was called to the capitol for half-time cock- calls. I made a mistake. I made a comment and the customer got angry. I still finished my dance cards, even though I was barely breathing. I had done what they wanted and it was only a comment because I was in pain. I didn't mean it.

And when I got home, he was nailed to my wall, shot eleven times and nailed to my wall.

My Baxter took my punishment. He handed me his life when he became my tame dog and I wasn't there when they came for him. He died showing them his teeth, defiant even though he didn't have a chance in hell of winning. Dying instead of running off. He protected the idea of us to his last breath. He died alone for my mistake. Little doggie boots on, Peeta.

I found out who it was. He was just following orders. He said he shot him so many times because the mindless brute just kept coming at him, taking one bullet and another and another. After the man told me his story, do you know what I did to him? I butchered him and liked it. I killed a peacekeeper for killing a dog. What do you imagine I would do for you?

I killed him. For the honor of a dog that shit on the sidewalk and gave me a case of fleas every summer and a battle with ticks every fall. I killed the man who pulled the trigger, because it felt right. He had no choice but to do what he was ordered and I smiled as I watched him cough little raindrops of blood all over his perfect white uniform. I skinned him and nailed his pelt to the hanging tree. I field dressed him for Sae. I took the head. Boiled the flesh out myself and sipped at the broth. My mentor left me, Baxter ate him, the peacekeeper killed him and I ate the dog-murderer. Maybe I'm insane, but they are all part of me. The skull is still up in my attic, clean and smiling white. How do I explain that sort of thing to your pure little heart?

This time I am both dog and master. I belong to you, boy. I belong to her. I am as faithful to you as Baxter was to me, but don't think for a second I won't poop on the floor every once in a while and bring you fleas that will drive you nuts from time to time. But, the two of you have tamed me, broken me to heel and just because I am not without a little pond scum on my fur, I will try to show you. I can't tell you with words any more than he could tell me. But I will stay. I will try.

No, sweetheart, we are not the same. I'm not good enough to ever be in his shadow and you are much too good to ever be stuck in mine. But if you die, you make so much worthless.

I watch him sleep and breath by breath I fall deeper in love with him knowing with each bit my heart allows, there will be a price. I did it. Now I have to undo it while still using them as pawns. Oh God Peeta, the train is so damned easy. Sticking around and living with what you do and what they do to you? That's the hard part.

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