SCHEMES OVER SOUP

District Twelve's black market originated from a coal warehouse abandoned in the years before the first rebellion against the Capitol. The Hob was not safe for the whole family by any means, but those who knew the right people were tolerated, regardless of who they were or what they were called or how many years they had been alive.

While most Hob peddlers and customers were Seam, social class status was sometimes ignored, as our Adam Bluet had proven. Business was business, and when dealing with Town folk who lacked Seam savvy, business was fairly accessible billfolds in coat pockets.

That was actually how Adam met a certain Seam boy of Abernathy descent, along with his alarmed fist introducing itself to half-flinched gray eyes. Why Adam's father, Alvin Bluet the butcher, entrusted his fourteen-year-old son with buying Hob twine to tie up packages of horsemeat was irrelevant information to Haymitch. The leather wallet smiled at him as it jounced past the soup counter. The pocket was just begging to be picked.

Not long after the attempt, when his maroon bruise faded into a waxy peach color, Haymitch was glad he had not succeeded in extracting the naive Town boy's wallet; Adam made a decent friend and his mother could cook.

Due to the events in the weeks following the Second Quarter Quell finale, Adam Bluet never bought from the Hob again. Even the Seam was nothing of value to him anymore since whoever would usually accompany him there were either traitors or fallen chess pieces. He would later leave the butchery to his younger sister and reopen the sweetshop.

The aforementioned chess piece found petty reasons to visit the Hob while his uncle was working during the week. Informed of their customs towards rich people, Stephan Hendricks decided to never step foot in the Hob and stayed in the Victors' Village to play his piano in peace each time Haymitch left.

After I had knelt and scraped a frosted man off a wall of the Hob, I saw dark curls smothered under a winter cap as their owner strode toward me, past me. Shutting out a frigid, cobalt sky with the door, the young victor entered the Hob as he always had in his first life, but his chin that once proudly tilted up in poverty drooped like his pocket of separate coins. Haymitch knew better than to put his money in a billfold. He ducked his head passing some stalls and greeted the peddlers at others, the ones he was so dependent of buying from less than a year earlier.

Haymitch was drawn to the grease and memories wafting from Sae's counter, and the woman greeted him like she never witnessed his loved ones' deaths.

Seated at the counter, spooning murky soup into their hungry but not starving mouths, were a trio of Peacekeepers. With them was the Head, who ignored his bowl of soup and swallowed liquor instead.

During Drusus' tenure, Peacekeepers never voluntarily associated with the Seam class and their shady market, and so long as no one was provoking riot against the Capitol, they made no attempt to shut it down. The arrangement remained after the arrival of the new Head, Cray, though Peacekeepers became regular customers since the price for something Hob was cheaper than the exact thing from Town. The only difference was the prettiness of the wrapping. Of course, there were also illegal goods like liquor and gambling cards that even humans in white uniforms sometimes couldn't resist.

Peacekeepers under Cray migrated towards the Hob instead of the Town Square, and the result was lazier law enforcing. As time passed, most of the gallows, stocks, and flog posts were taken down while some were left to collect water in various forms as a kind of perfunctory threat. No one complained unless the lack of rules was not in their favor.

The new Head's negligent attitude had a plethora of theories but they centered on the same general idea. District Twelve was the puny, least favorite child of Panem, the one picked last in Games. Present among adults when Cray was brought up was the word demotion.

But, then, children used a different word to describe him.

* * * CRAY * * *

Creepy.

A heavy hand thumped Haymitch on the back. Cray slurred, "You again? Don't you have something better to do with your time than come here?"

Haymitch shrugged off the Head's drunken hand and comment. He asked Sae, "Need any help?"

She never did, the woman, but some years ago she looked down at two starving kids who'd rather earn a coin than beg for one. She could not say no to them. Haymitch ladled soup into bowls and Mollie, with her more pleasant smile that a thirteen-year-old Haymitch noticed was really pretty before he kissed her amid the giddiness in the seconds after New Year's Eve, served it to the customers. Sae stewed the soup and handled the money.

The cook nodded at one of two workers and expected the other to pop up over his shoulder but didn't.

"You could be coming in other places with all that money," Cray grinned, not grasping that he had been ignored.

Sae threatened to confiscate his uneaten soup while Haymitch glared at him, revolted. "Is that how you've been spending your time, sir?" he snarled in reply.

Cray just laughed and rattled his liquor bottle, an action Haymitch perfected in later years. "Nothing else to do around here. Eleven had at least some excitement."

"Excitement," repeated Haymitch. His scowl never averted from Cray's flushed, unconcerned face. "Wonder what kind you're talking about there. Was that why you were relegated? Too many kids with your ugly face walking around, or too many of them deemed felonious enough for you to take out the whip?"

"Watch your mouth, boy," bellowed Cray. He rose from his stool, which would have been intimidating if he were not so unsteady afterward.

The good people of the Hob barely gave their exchange a second glance. To them, it would end as another Hob brawl or someone would get shot. They kept about their business

* * * FIGHTERS AND BYSTANDERS * * *

Typical human behavior on both ends,

for as long as I can remember.

Haymitch shifted his feet and stooped, looking down. He was more than happy to keep arguing but the other officers whose roles in his nightmares made them unnervingly memorable shifted their guns that were focused on him, his mother, his brother, and a Seam girl one summer night. Besides, he told Sae he'd help her.

The boy wove around behind the stall and was handed a filthy apron. "Great," he snorted, tying it around his waist.

When the only trace of the Peacekeeper squad was their bowls left on the counter, the Hob cook's smile fell. She chided him, a firm palm to his arm. "You can't be picking fights with Peacekeepers like that, especially the damn Head."

Haymitch shrugged. He ladled broth into a clean bowl and slid it over to her. She pushed the apology away, saying, "First off, don't waste my soup. Not all of us have big fancy houses and loads of cash now. Second, just because you're a victor doesn't mean you're excused from having your ass handed to you."

His black brows waggled and the corners of his lips angled up, unlike his eyes that avoided looking at her.

"By Peacekeepers, you silly boy."

* * * FACTS ABOUT SAE * * *

She was referred to as Greasy Sae

by everyone minus two who worked for her.

She adored Mollie Hannigan and Haymitch Abernathy.

She had a son in the mines

who remained in the mines forever.

Her cooking was okay at best.

She gagged anyone who acknowledged that with a wooden spoon.

She lived through the second rebellion.

"I call it practice," explained Haymitch. His eyes took on a grayer shade of dangerous. "I want to overthrow the Capitol." That was his next move.

Sae bent toward him, away from the bustling market. I leaned in to catch her words. "You don't mean that. You're still upset over… over what happened." Haymitch scowled but did not argue against the accusation. "Seeking revenge is only going to get you killed, and you better believe no one here will intervene or join your little fantasy rebellion." She was the best example of that, standing by as guiltless damned were killed.

The victor growled, "It doesn't have to be now. Rebellions take time. Everything needs to be set up, unrest has to build up. I ain't talking about lame little revolts here."

"You couldn't even get our own district to rebel," Sae snapped haughtily, lowering her voice. "The whole nation would have to be involved if anything's going to get accomplished."

"Exactly. I think it's willing to be." He exhaled before quietly elaborating, "My forcefield trick angered President Snow because it made the Gamemakers look like idiots, showing that the Capitol is capable of being fooled. All of Panem saw that, and for a moment they doubted the Capitol's power. I did, and I was nearly dead. They have to be thinking of rebelling."

Eyes dull, Sae shook her head. "Thinking and doing are two different things, boy."

Eyes bright, Haymitch said, "I know. My point is that it's the start of something - something big."

A few customers stepped up to the counter so the two abruptly but casually dropped their conversation, like they were not discussing a revolution. Haymitch was always acting.

As Haymitch ladled out soup, Sae told him, "You just worry about your tributes in a few months. Bring one of them home. Okay?"

"Okay," he muttered, turning with the bowls looped in his arms like souls, and served the customers, knowing that another worker was supposed to do that part.

From what I saw that night, the Hob was alive with purchasing and selling, stealing and smuggling, unaware that a plot had seeded in the mind of a young man. A personal vendetta against the Capitol would grow into a national insurgence. Haymitch was joining the bigger game a bit early. If you ask me, he'd been a part of it longer than he thought.