7.
Two weeks to perhaps a month every year was not enough. It could never have been enough. A lifetime, Effie thought, would not have been enough – though on the whole she was learning hard to smack down any such notion that felt like 'romantic.'
She became obsessed with maximising time, using the seconds that they had to her idea of maximum capacity. Once or twice she wondered if she was not helping to kill their tributes with this preoccupation, but each time she put the idea quickly and neatly away.
The tick-tock of time became a metronome beat in her head that held her obsessed. An average 334 days a year spent willing her life to pass, and then a maximum maybe thirty in which she wished they would slow down. No two seconds were the same length, she noticed, becoming wrapped up in technicalities, a fascination with time pieces that sent her, briefly back to school in the Capitol to tinker with a course in architectural design.
She pretended to be less interested than she was, pretended to be slower, less intelligent. It was not good, or rather – she noticed it more and more – not safe to be too clever. One day someone commented on her current fascination with disintegration and ruins, and while they had not meant any kind of metaphor her insides had laughed harshly at the truth of it.
Still she never let anything out, not in all those 334 day stretches, 8016 hours, 480960 minutes. She had the numbers memorised in her head like jail sentences. One year he noticed the tattoo on her hip, an intricate golden number 2592000. He had scowled, tracing it with a finger –
"The hell's that? A prison number? Effie Trinket – rebel? I'd sure as hell like to see that."
"It's nothing," she fluted. "It's – a fashion trend". Not it's the maximum number of seconds we could potentially get together in a year. Never that.
One year she did crack. It was the year she turned 28 for the third time. Capitol women had developed a knack for staying 28 for an incredible length of time and 29 for even longer. Nobody who was anybody was over thirty any more.
That year the games had been over with surprising, and to Effie, quite terrible rapidity. She hated having to rely on the continuation of such a thing for their time together, but it did not stop her, and these games had ended abruptly after just three days; a scheduled earthquake in the desert arena taking out twice the number of contestants the game makers had counted on.
She knew she should have had greater concerns but still she felt cheated. Foolishly she had expressed this and when they parted ways that year it was on the back of a hideous screaming row.
It plagued her for two months too badly to ignore and eventually she could not keep from the desperate and one time measure of heading out alone to District Twelve.
It was not normal for a Capitol citizen to travel to an outer district and so she had to formulate her excuses carefully. Luckily, formulating excuses was her absolute shining talent. Luckier still, it was normal for an escort to be able to communicate with the mentor by phone and in a fantastic stroke of good fortune Haymitch had destroyed his not long after that years games.
-x-
Needless to say, he had been talking to her at the time. After weeks and weeks of trying she had been exhilarated when he actually picked up the phone at all, and then instantly dismayed when he sounded barely intelligible on the other end.
"Oh god, it's you," he had slurred on hearing her voice "Don't need you to shine your radiance on us from afar, sweetheart".
"Look, I did not call just for you to be rude at me."
"Ugh? So why did you at all princess? You wanna bitch and moan some more about how these poor kids should take longer dying just for your amusement?"
"It is not just amusement, you –"
"Save it. Fucking spare me."
"To hear you talk I'd think you didn't care if you saw me or not," she sniffed. She hadn't wanted to do this again, she really hadn't.
"Well fuck me, she finally catches on."
Hurt made her mean. Everything made him mean, and it finally escalated into –
"Haymitch Abernathy don't you DARE talk to me like that!"
This was followed by roared cursing and then crashing sounds on the other end before the line went dead.
-x-
She supposed she could have arranged for someone to go out to the district to fix the phone, but her mantra of if you want something done, do it yourself had stood her in good stead long enough for it to sound perfectly reasonable when she applied for her travel pass; and in the early spring she set out alone.
-x-
She supposed she was not exactly undercover, still she felt a need to not be recognised that prompted her to go in with what she described as "almost no make-up", the plainest skirt she could find – from years ago when the fashion was District Couture- and a scarf draped around her head. She knew where the house was from a previous year when they had had to come and actively drag him out of bed for the reaping, and headed that way now like a fugitive.
For once she actually knocked, though she may as well not have; nobody answered. So she went in. And if there was one thing everyone in the district knew but she didn't, it was that you did not go into Haymitch's house uninvited. And nobody was ever invited.
But even if she had known, Effie was not one to be put off easily. Still, though she was not scared she was appalled by the smell that hit her on entering. It was as though nobody had cleaned or washed in this place in years. There were wild animals, she would comment later, that had tidier and sweeter smelling lairs.
She had just started picking her way through the hallway when a growl resounded from within –
"Whoever you are you can fuck off!"
Obviously she did not. Two minutes later she was pinned against the wall with a knife at her throat. Haymitch looked from her to the knife and back again, and groaned.
"Ah fuck, now I'll never get rid of you." He dropped the knife and let her go – "The fuck are you doing here?"
"You could at least try to seem pleased to see me," she huffed.
"I'm not. How. What – why are you here? And why are you dressed like some made – up parody of a peasant?"
"Well –" she breathed. "I couldn't get you on the phone, and –"
"- and on the day the words flimsy fucking excuse were reinvented, we all stood by in awe and watched. Miss me that much, did you?"
"I did not –"
He laughed at the transparency of her lie.
"You did."
She looked down. Breathed. Looked up at him, for once stripped of all denial –
"Yes."
"Effie –" he groaned, closed his eyes and sighed, brushed the side of her face with brief but breath-taking tenderness – "You can't do this. It's not safe."
Still that unwavering look from her, that made him realise more completely than before how much more there was to Effie Trinket than anyone had ever suspected, even him –
"I don't care."
He shook his head – "I care –" do you know what it would do to me if they found out. If they did anything to you – "I care about me," was all he said.
"Then I'll just replace your phone and go," she said primly, chin hard set, tried to sidestep him but he caught her arm and her eye and wished for the millionth time, only this time more than ever, that she did not do to him all the things she did.
"Effie." He reiterated, in a long sigh – "You're here now –" his hand slid roughly up her arm, turning into a grip she could not escape, his head bending to hers until their foreheads touched – "You think I'd just let you go without getting some use out of you?"
"That is not why I came –" she began, but he laughed, turned her around and pushed her back into the wall, face first.
I love you, god help me, I love you.
"Bitch," he growled, almost affectionately, ripping the stupid dress down to the waist, grinding his cock against her back and squeezing brutal fingers into the soft breasts so easily broken out of the ridiculous corset she was wearing – "Of course it is."
She tried to make her gasp sound like disgust, failing terribly when she arched back against him as she did it – "You want this. This is just a kink to you isn't it? You could take every man in the district and not be satisfied, open those slut legs and let them all in and you'd scream for more and then scream for them to stop. I'd like that. I could get so hard seeing you get raped, see them break that pretty Capitol cunt with their big hard dirty dicks – fuck –"
"You're – disgusting –" she managed – "Get your filthy hands off me."
"Oh sweetheart," he smirked into her neck – "It's the filth you come here for and you know it, you want these filthy hands all over your precious skin and more –"
"I do not –"
"You're a lying bitch," he murmured almost affably, squeezing her cunt, feeling her, wet through her skirt, ripping it from her, suppressing a hiss at her luscious nakedness and running his hands all over her body in an appreciation he would never voice and she, moaning and squirming and wanting –
"Don't worry," he hissed, voice rough with liquor and lust, roughly yanking at his belt buckle – "I can fuck you enough for twenty men, fill you so full of my disgusting seed you'll never feel clean again."
"You only have to touch me for that," she managed to spit back.
He snorted, smirked and thrust into her brutally and without warning and rammed hard when she screamed, shoving her face down into the wall. She wailed as he thrust, hurting her and filling her and snarling how she loved it, calling her every vile name under the sun and they were the sweetest of endearments to her and she came when he did, jerking every last drop of come roughly into her body.
He pulled away from her and watched her whimpering into the wall, so soft and shuddering it stiffened his cock almost at once again just to see her, thinking fuck, she was everything he never wanted to want. Then the tenderness he could not help but feel made him need to be cruel to her and he dragged her by the shoulder, swinging her into his arms –
"More where that came from sweetheart," he growled.
She was so light. He carried her up the stairs, barely feeling it, so fragile to the touch though he knew she was far from fragile, and that awkward, awful feeling tickled at him again. Thankfully she struggled weakly in his arms with a feeble –
"Put me down!" that went straight to his cock, making him rock hard and desperate for her all over again;
"Put you down in a minute princess, give you so much more of what you came for you'll have trouble walking away."
He threw her onto the bed viciously, trying not to see how beautiful she was against the stained and filthy sheets. She noticed, of course, and that precious little wrinkle of disgust made him want to hurt her or kiss her, he was never quite sure which. He was on her, grinding against her before he could start to feel anything like love for her.
"Make me so hard –" he groaned – "So hard, filthy Capitol whore –" shoving into her again, snarling that he'd fuck her all night. She squirmed; he slammed her wrists into the bed. She spat in his face and he slapped her.
"Yeah fight me," he spat – "Make me rape you, you like that." She struggled, weakly, but enough to make him push her down, slam into her harder, pound her into the bed.
"Good," he growled– "Good girl."
She screams. He comes, she follows. It becomes a dance, the steps that repeat over and over until exhaustion calls the music to an end.
-x-
When tiredness came she fell asleep quickly. Never able to fall asleep quickly, he lay up for a long time looking at her. When she started to shiver in her sleep he pulled the covers up and wrapped them around her, when she still shivered he curled heavily around her himself and held her still. No amount of sucking the last dregs from the bottles round the bed would blot out all the fears and nagging feelings anyway.
I hate you, he thought as he kissed her shoulder gently, marveling at her softness and perfection – corrupt and despicable, you are a product of everything I hate most, I hate and despise you and I will do everything in my power to keep you always safe. My Effie. My sweet Effie.
_x_