11.

When the announcement aired in District Twelve, Haymitch Abernathy destroyed his television in rage at it all. Within minutes Peeta Mellark was at his door, begging and half in tears; beyond the fence Katniss Everdeen charged through the trees and screamed at the sky. Within the hour they had talked and drunk their way through it in some semblance of togetherness.

Miles and miles away in the Capitol, Effie Trinket bit her lip, stared numbly at the screen until the shivering stopped and she could walk calmly, oh so calmly through into the kitchen and set about the mechanical and comforting process of brewing coffee.

In her head, she had done it all. She had roared and raged and smashed her own television screen. She had begged and pleaded for all and any aid. She had denied and refused that this could be happening. She had run out herself and screamed at the same sky. She had seen herself do all these things so clearly they may as well have happened. She had drunk herself under the table with the rest of them.

She did not feel a thing until the coffee scalded her tongue and her hands were still and calm and when she set the cup and saucer back down in their place, the china did not even rattle.

In the weeks that followed she did not think. Did not feel. She barely spoke. She kept it up right until the afternoon of the day before the reaping, two hours before taking the night train out to District Twelve.

-x-

"I can't do this," the words finally came out; not in the scream she felt inside but in a whisper as she sat on the floor, back against the wall, cradling the phone as though it were a child through fingers that shook and arms that ached from the effort of holding it to her ear.

"Yes you can." Haymitch sounded weary, sounded like he'd rather be elsewhere; sounded, if she was not mistaken, strangely sober.

"I can't," she heard her voice wobble shrilly and bit her lip hard, afraid that she would cry – "I can't just stand there and read out your name."

"You should maybe worry more about if you didn't –"

"Well what's that supposed to mean?"

There was a silence on the other end; she could almost hear him weighing up whether or not to tell her something.

"Doesn't matter," he said – "Anyway, maybe you won't have to. Maybe you'll get Peeta."

"And that's supposed to make me happy? You must think less of me than you've even said."

"Look sweetheart, I really don't think now is the time –"

"Of course it's not the time! It's never the time!"

"Where are you now anyway - shit – Effie, shouldn't you be on the train?"

"Two hours," she sighed, her voice tiny.

"What?"

"It leaves in two hours – well one hour forty eight minutes –"

"Are you ready?"

She looked down at her lap, she was wearing a dressing gown and little else, it was gold with little daisies on the hem. She picked at a daisy miserably.

"No"

"Effie –" Haymitch groaned heavily.

"What if I didn't?" she burst in quickly – "If I wasn't there and there was nobody to read out anyone's name? They couldn't make anybody go then could they?"

"Don't be ridiculous. They'd get someone. Anyone. They'd get us to read out each other's names if need be – Jesus –" for the first time she heard a new panic in his voice – "Do you know how much trouble you could get into? You have no idea – it's not safe to even say that. Effie get on that fucking train – please."

It was the please that did it. She wasn't sure she'd ever heard him use the word before. She got on her feet but she couldn't keep the tears back, even as she moved around the room gathering her things together, holding her phone tight between ear and shoulder.

"Don't go," she said – "Stay with me." She knew she was being selfish; she could only imagine how much worse this had to be for him, she had been beating herself about the head with imagining it ever since the announcement aired.

"I'm here," he said, on the other end, and his voice steadied her, it was low and comforting and it always did – "Not going anywhere". He had not been beating himself up these past few weeks thinking about her and it only now occurred to him, somewhat guiltily, that this was worse for her than for him. He had never been more scared than he was at hearing how much more scared she sounded now than she ever had but he pushed it down, pushed it down so hard and so difficult with nothing to swallow it down, pushed it all down to be able to tell her a calming, meaningless litany of reassurance. Eventually he asked her if she was looking suitably ridiculous, and she sniffed hard with the effort of snipping back at him not to be rude.

"It'll be okay," he lied, though it had sunk in on him more and more as he had spoken to her – all those reassurances he did not believe for a moment – just how much trouble she could be in. He had never imagined she would even think of going against the Capitol, of even questioning what she was supposed to do, and it chilled him more than he had known it could to hear so ready to do so. It felt like there were so many people he had to take care of now, so many more lives he had got himself invested in than he had ever wanted. His head swam with it worse than if he had been drinking.

"Are you sure?" He could hear the strength returning to her voice but it did not relieve him as much as it should; not when he wondered how much she was pretending.

"Yeah" he said, swallowing hard – "I'll – I'll see you tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," she echoed faintly, putting down the phone as though in a trance. I have to be strong she thought – I have to – for them.

-x-

If it had not been such a grim occasion Haymitch thought he would have smiled to see her. She really had outdone herself in that ridiculous dress, and her face was so over the top nobody would ever notice she had been crying. He could not help wondering if one false move would send the butterflies scattering from her dress and it was an image that seemed remarkably to fit today – of her just exploding in a shower of butterflies.

But as soon as she started to speak, his heart sank for her. He never thought he would miss the ridiculous, inappropriate and frankly nauseating way in which she usually conducted the reaping ceremony but he found himself thinking god Effie, please try harder with every word she spoke. He could see her hand falter over the jar, almost feel her wondering even then if she could just not – could see her clearly in his mind just refusing as though that way anybody could be saved. He could see her almost as clearly being the one dragged off by Peacekeepers for trying it. He didn't want to see it, not even in his mind.

To Effie those little slips of paper felt like they weighed a ton. She could see her slow and guilty movements across the stage as though watching someone else perform. However hard her brain shouted at her, its usually trumpeting cry of smile smile smile you're on camera- somewhere in her head she was refusing to listen. When she read out Katniss's name the sense of déjà vu almost overwhelmed her at the same time as a weird sensation that she had been hoping it might just read somebody else.

Moving on to the second bowl had been like waiting for the second ear to get pierced. There was not enough time, not enough of anything to steel her for it and it was the culmination of years of nightmares to see his name on the slip. She thought at first her voice would fail her and when it did work it came out in a rushing sigh, and that's it, she thought, now I've sentenced you to death and what will you ever think of me now? She had thought those nightmares rested strictly in the realms of the impossible, it was beyond surreal to live it and she rather thought she might faint. Even though she never fainted, not in the tightest of corsets. She wished she could. She didn't want to feel this, didn't want to hear them argue over who got to die, didn't want that second of relief to hear Peeta volunteer. When they saluted the crowd she wanted to salute with them.

It was all over too fast to process. She wasn't sure she even should process this living nightmare of a moment. Wasn't sure she was going to get out of this one unscathed – they'd been live on camera for goodness sake, and she was almost certain her inability to conduct this ceremony in her habitual manner would have been noticed and disapproved. Wasn't sure, as they were hurried away, if she could keep standing, keep going, not until a hand touched the small of her back, rough and gentle all at once and a voice close to her ear murmured –

"It's okay sweetheart, you did fine."

It was a comfort, having someone to share her headspace, even as it occurred to her that he had never lied to her so much over the course of any one day, ever in the last twenty years.

_x_

I'm not sure this bit is any good, cause I didn't really want to just rehash bits of canon but that's kinda the point this story is up to now and it's too important a series of events to just leave out I figure. On the plus side it made my beta tear up so it can't be too sucky. Reassure me people, I'm a fragile Capitol butterfly. :-)