Harvest Festival rolls around some weeks later and four of them forgo the town festivities, wishing instead to spend the time quietly with each other. Peeta makes the lamb stew with plums that Katniss likes, Katniss shows Effie how to decorate the doors with corn and Haymitch just tries his best to ignore the fact that Effie still hasn't given his sweater back. Not that it's bothering him at all. It's big and swallows her small frame up but she's wearing it like a dress today with some warm leggings and he wonders if he should be worried about the fact that he likes seeing her in his clothes.
Dinner is filled with idle chatter, everyone carefully avoiding any topics that would set off a reaction with either of them but that doesn't leave a lot to talk about so they stick to things happening in the present. They talk about Effie's foray into gardening, 'I still can't get the dirt stains off my trousers!', about Peeta's baking experiments, 'Who knew cucumbers could be so wrong?', about Katniss' forest excursions, 'There seem to be more rabbits than usual,', and about Haymitch's geese, 'Damn things won't stop making so much noise'.
Effie brings out a bottle of wine and everyone indulges in a drink; they smile, they laugh and they do what they can to stay away from thinking of their dead families. She wonders if this is how it will be from now on, if it will always feel like every happy exchange has an undercurrent of melancholy, and she thinks back to her stay at the hospital.
They finally reduced her morphling level to one where she could stay lucid for most of the day and Haymitch came to visit her again. She was sitting up in bed, staring at a healing cut running up her forearm, tracing the puckered wound lightly.
"You're just going to irritate it further," she heard him say as he pulled the curtain aside.
She shrugged but stilled her hand anyway.
"Hello Haymitch," she breathed. She sounded so tired and God, she was so so so tired.
"How you feeling, princess?" he asked gruffly as he flopped into the cushioned chair next to her bed.
"Tired," she murmured, fiddling with the blanket on her lap.
He grunted in acknowledgement.
"Some days it doesn't feel like I'm alive," she continued softly, "And on the days I do…"
"You always feel a little dead inside?" he finished, a grim smile on his face.
"Yeah," she sounded broken.
"Yeah," but so did he.
"It'll be like that for some time," he stated bluntly.
She started crying. Then she was laughing, her tears dripping into her smile as she spoke.
"Thank you," she breathed relieved, "Thank you,"
Everyone she saw, the nurses, the doctors, even a few of her slightly less squeamish Capitol friends who came to see her kept saying that things would be alright. That she would be okay. That she would go back to normal soon. But he understood that it was difficult, that things won't really be the same again, that some things just don't go away. It was so refreshing to have someone state the blatant truth of the entire miserable situation instead of dancing around her pretending that nothing ever happened.
"Effie?" she hears a tentative call from Peeta, "Are you okay? You look a bit… dazed,"
"Nothing new there," Haymitch smirked.
She rolls her eyes at him before replying, "Oh yes," she beams, "I'm just," she's not sure if she should say it, "Glad we're all here together,"
When a hush falls over the table she decides that maybe it was the wrong thing to say but, to her surprise, Katniss speaks up.
"Thank you, Effie," she murmurs gently, her lips lifting into a small smile.
She's not really sure what Katniss is thanking her for but when Peeta takes her hand in his, and Haymitch's rough ones clasp her own, and everyone is holding hands around the table, it takes everything in her to not start weeping right then and there. They stay like that for a few moments before going back to their food, the air feeling a little bit lighter and the conversation a little less stilted.
Later that night, as Effie is curled up on the sofa with a book, Haymitch settles into the cushions at the other end with a bottle of wine and two glasses. She raises her eyebrow at the bottle but he just pours each of them a glass, she's surprised that he's actually using a glass, and they lapse into a comfortable silence.
Sometime later she hears him, it's barely a whisper but she catches it.
"I miss them,"
She doesn't wait for him to elaborate. The quiet admission of those three words already exceeds anything anyone would expect of him.
His pained eyes are looking into his wineglass as though it holds the reasons for their suffering.
He glances out the window and sees the silhouettes of Katniss and Peeta moving about in the house across the street.
"Have the kids though," he shrugs, a wry smile on his face.
Before she can stop herself it comes tumbling off her tongue and out of her lips.
"And me,"
His stormy grey eyes slowly lift from the burgundy liquid to her deep blue eyes and she can't tell if that was the wrong thing to say because he's just staring at her.
His brows knit.
He looks away.
She regrets it immediately.
"Do I?"
It comes out so strained and harsh and almost… Hopeful, that she's momentarily stunned.
She's shocked that he even has to ask but maybe it's what he needs. The reassurance that she's not going anywhere. That her living in Twelve isn't a temporary stint. That she's here, to stay with him.
"Of course," she murmurs, looking down at her hands peeking through the sleeves of his sweater, "Of course you do,"