Gale's gone and she has nowhere else to go. He knew that. He'd tried to hide in his house – to seem oblivious to the obvious problem facing them. But Sae had come to track him down after figuring out the shift and had told him she was coming to stay with him.

He'd pretended that it was alright. He'd even tried to tidy a little.

But inside it ate at him. He knew he wasn't going to be much help – he couldn't be. She'd end up rotting here with him because he wouldn't be able to track her meals or force her out of bed like Gale had. Worse, she'd see that he was just as bad. He couldn't hide his own terrors from her with her under the same roof. This was going to be terrible.

He continued tidying the front room, slowly putting things away and tossing out old trash. It was the least he could do. It was all he could do to keep his mind busy. The day's bottle sat alone on the kitchen counter. Sae had asked him to not drink today. This was the worst plan ever.

When Sae pulls open the door and helps her take a few things upstairs it's awkward. He doesn't move from the kitchen, slowly watching them climb. This isn't a good idea. His hands worry the dishcloth he'd been using to wipe down the counters.

He knows he has to pull it together. Setting down the cloth he puts on his facade and heads towards the stairs. They're in 'her' room now, talking quietly. He feels like a fearful child as he approaches the door, slowly looking inside.

"I'll still be over every day to prepare dinner. You're on your own for breakfast and lunch. If you have any issues, Thom is just down the road, so don't you worry." He watches as Sae prattles on, he can see Katniss nodding.

"We're gonna be fine, Sae. We're not children." His voice is strained. He clears his throat. Sae meets his eyes and lifts her sturdy frame from the bed.

"You can sure act like one," she pauses, setting a hand on his arm. When her eyes meet his he sees clearly the threat that is being laid down. He can't fuck this up. Not this time. He nods and she heads for the stairs. He watches as Katniss spreads her hands over the threadbare bedding.

"Let's just pretend like this isn't happening, alright?" He doesn't know what else to say – he can't say it'll be alright, he can't say he's happy to have her and he damn well won't pretend like the whole scenario isn't the worst idea ever. He catches her nod and then turns to leave, heading to his own room to hide.

He hears the knock on the door and ignores it. He's not getting up. He hurts too much to move. His body is drying out and he feels like death warmed up.

The knock sounds again, impatient.

"Haymitch, I think I broke your stove." He hears her voice through the door. He doesn't care.

"Fuck off and fix it then," he grumbles into his pillow. The old Katniss would have had a crass remark or a bucket of water to douse him with. He should be drunk. Gale had been right. He rolled over and tried to suffocate himself in his linens as he heard footsteps retreat down the hallway.

He's not getting out of bed yet.

It's late. It smells delicious.

He pulls himself free of the nightmare he was having and puts his feet on the floor. His body doesn't want to cooperate today. Slowly and clumsily he stands and puts on pants and a shirt he picked off the floor. He doesn't care. His stomach leads him downstairs to the kitchen where Sae is toasting some bread and cutting apart a pasta dish.

He's only ever seen those in the Capitol. His mouth waters.

Katniss is sitting at the table, her fingers running along the designs he'd carved in so long ago. The scene looks serene and he blunders into it with his shirt flapping and his heavy footsteps on the cold floor. He scrapes out a chair and lowers himself down slowly. He can feel Katniss' eyes watching him as he rubs his temples.

"Sae fixed your stove. Apparently I don't know how to cook. Or your stove is so old that it predates me." He grins as the palm of his hands rubs out his eyes.

"Self-reliance. I feel that's one of those steps that the doc would help you with if you'd pick up the phone once in a while."

"You don't have a phone, Haymitch. Can't call anyone without a phone." Her quip is light and familiar. He still doesn't think this is a good idea. He can feel it in his bones. That could also be the sobriety. He can't tell.

"Okay, eat up. I've gotta get home to my grandbaby." Sae says as she places the plates of food in front of them. Katniss says goodbye and shows her out as he begins to eat.

The house hadn't had this much activity in decades. He wanted silence back. His eyes scan the room noticing how clean it is. He'd only scratched the surface of the dirt but now, now it has shine. He wonders to himself how long it had taken her. This wasn't right – she shouldn't be cleaning. He watches as she returns to the table and lifts the fork to her mouth.

"You don't have to clean up. My mess is my own; I'll take care of it." He can't be a burden to her. That's not how this works.

"Don't worry, I won't. I just needed a clean space to fix some meat for Sae. I got carried away." He nods in acceptance and eats his meal in silence. When they finish he washes down the dishes and retires to the sofa to watch the fire as she remains seated at the table.

When he hears the soft footsteps moving across the floor he turns and watches her carefully as she sits in the chair to his right. It's old and dingy but high backed with wings. He'd spent too many nights drunkenly passed out on that chair.

"Haymitch, you don't have to be sober just because I live here." He won't meet her eyes. "I mean, hey, great to save a liver, but this doesn't have to change anything." He hadn't been doing it because she was living here, he knew, he'd been doing it to try to help. He couldn't admit that. Instead he shook his head and reached for the flask hidden in his coffee table. He took a quick sip and put it back. Just to deal with the edge.

"What am I supposed to do with you, girl?" His throat is rough on the words.

"I don't know. Sae said I could either live here or she'd burn down my house – I didn't really have a choice in this matter." She laughs lightly and it's the first time he's heard her laugh in so long.

"How about we just make sure you eat. You can do what you want the rest of the time. No stupidity though," he watches as she meets his eyes. There's a threat there and he knows she's understood him. No fucking around with Peeta until things were calmed down.

It was all he could ask of her.

They sat in silence for a while, watching the fire crackle in the hearth. It was steady and not as bad as he'd imagined it would be.

The days passed quietly. He picked up the bottle again but consumed oh so little – just barely enough to cover the aches and pains. Not nearly enough to choke out the dreams. But he was managing. Each night when he woke up with a sound caught in his throat that he would swallow back down only to realize that he was woken by the sound of her screams.

She apparently didn't sleep well either. It killed him, every night.

When he woke today it was different. There were no screams filling the house – instead it was silent and dense. He noticed that the sounds had been his own again and it chilled his bones. He struggled to his feet to grab the bottle that was on his dresser. He clung to it as he wandered downstairs to his front room. He needed to escape from his bed.

He'd almost expected to find her, still awake, lounging in front of the fire. She wasn't there.

His exhausted soul collapsed onto the couch. Tonight he was going to drink. Tonight he was allowed to drink. Tonight he was going to work on Finn's journal.

The third journal that he'd started to fill with Finnick Odair was a hardcover black leather piece with twice as many pages as he gave due to the first two. He'd realized too late that he would need more pages to remember this boy.

It was a collection of thoughts, recollections, nightmares and dreams. He paid very little value to the actual timeline of events when he wrote – it just didn't need any formality. His fingers thumbed the pages as he scanned where he'd left off. It had been a small memory of the boy, just before his Victory Tour, when the Capitol had introduced them.

He'd remembered the sweat on the boy's palms and the anger that had been fueled into his blood. He'd hated him for being so young. Snow had clapped with joy.

"Finally a chance for you to share your unique set of skills Haymitch! This is fantastic!" The man had been almost giddy. His stomach had churned. The boy had stayed silent.

He'd written that he thought the boy hadn't even known what was happening at the time.

He reached for the pen and took a swig from his bottle. He needed to record his dream, if only just to get it out of his head. It was a conversation that they'd had before the Quell, one that had spun the fire into a fury inside of him as he'd realized he wasn't alone in his plan.

Finn had come to him, asking to be ally's with his Tributes. He'd brushed off the idea, determined to only focus on bringing Katniss home – he'd known he couldn't save them all. But Finn had pushed harder for him to listen. Had kept the bottle from his lips while he spun webs of words and secrets.

The boy had done so much more with his 'appointments' than he ever had.

"We've got one shot left, Haymitch. One. And if it fails, then they've destroyed everyone who could have changed things." His hand scribbled messily across the page as he remembered. "The Districts love us. They'd follow us to their deaths. But it's like the original game designers had known how 75 years would bring uneasiness. This Quell wasn't a plant like everyone thinks. These guys knew that it was too long to keep up the Games without some adversity. So they put in the failstop trigger to utterly destroy any revolution.

"The Games were so designed with breaking down the Districts and forcing them into compliance that they were meant to change the way people change. It takes decades to build enough hatred so they waited longer. Don't you see?" Finn had grabbed his shoulder, begging to be heard, as they sat in the noisy bar. The whole story had seemed so calculated, so conspiracy-like, that he'd scoffed at the thought.

Always in his dream would it flicker then to the night of the Interviews where they had all stood with their hands clasped together. It always had made him startle awake, a feeling of being strangled choking off his breath.

His hand stopped on the page as he finished the thought. He finished off the bottle and put the journal down, spent. It wasn't long before he was snoring into the couch cushions as the alcohol coursed through his system and warmed his blood.