He was going to scratch his eyes out. Remove the skin on his arms and peel away any vestige of sanity that he had left. Somehow he was on the train heading back to the last place he'd ever thought he'd go again. The Capitol.
Even the thought made his skin crawl. He longed for a drink to calm his bones but had decided he could find no solace this time in the bottle. It had been the callousness of sobriety that had made the shaking stop (finally) and be replaced by an itching so intense he could not escape it.
It was a mental thing. A combination of all the hopes and fears and pure desperation that he was laying out on the table with this one gesture. He needed to find something that he'd lost. He was determined to find it.
Katniss and Peeta had both stayed away since her return. He couldn't help but feel he deserved it like punishment. He did. His intentions had run him aground and now he couldn't help either of them. So he was going back.
He hadn't even called.
As the days had passed in District 12 with no contact he'd withdrawn completely into his house only coming out to tend to his geese and then escaping back into the safety of his doors. He had pulled in and stayed low – determined to not ruffle any feathers. He hadn't even replaced his stock of liquor from Rylan after the night he'd poured it all out. He was trying cold turkey. He wished it was wild.
That must be where he'd gotten this fucked up idea.
Why was he on this train? Heading back to the place that had destroyed everything?
His mind flipped on that thought – he wasn't heading back to the place. He was heading back to her. Like a moth drawn to a light he needed to find the one thing that he'd lost that could still be found – if he looked. His Tributes wouldn't come back to him. They didn't need him.
The last time he'd seen her was the day of the trial. She'd chosen to accompany the Hawthorne boy to keep up appearances and to keep her facade of determined distance. He hadn't realized how much it would bother him not being able to sit next to her as the decision was read – she'd known that either way it went down he would be lost to her and still they had wasted it as they sat apart. The alcohol that day had masked the terrible disappointment.
He'd meant to kiss her, to hold her, one last time before he'd been whisked out of the court room by the guards. He'd meant to. But it hadn't happened – he'd been too tangled up and determined to get his little broken bird home.
He thought it hadn't bothered him much, they'd said their goodbyes already so many times, but when he was home it had finally begun to sink in. He would be forever in 12 and she was being tracked in the city. They wouldn't be in the same space again. He wouldn't ever feel her presence near him again. The realization had been unsettling.
He stopped pacing in his compartment as the train began to slow. He'd felt like a trapped tiger for days, pacing and sleeping, as the trip had dragged on. The only train back to the Capitol had been set to do a round trip on all of the Districts. Apparently nobody ever left 12 despite how restrictions were lowered and travel applications were no longer required.
He hadn't even thought to notify the government of his intention to leave. It didn't matter. If they checked, she'd still be there. As long as she didn't do anything stupid, she wouldn't leave without that boy. He didn't need to be a part of that factor.
He intended to keep a low profile anyways, if he could. He didn't want to be back.
As the train pulled into the station he held his breath, barely holding on to consciousness. His fingers gripped tightly to his lone bag that he strung over his shoulder as he stood at the train's door. Before him the skyline of the Capitol was painted in the afternoon light. It looked ominous and darker than he remembered it as the smog and a striking feeling of desolation hovered in the air.
This wasn't the same place that had once controlled Panem. It didn't shine and it sure as hell didn't look as though it would feast upon the lives of children to stay youthful.
His mind revelled in the idea that the Capitol had truly fallen from its glory.
Even the sounds were different, he noticed, as he walked the beaten path from the station to the city square. The bustle and constant harassment of noise was more distant and faded than it had ever been.
His mind thrust forward a memory from one of his drug-fueled appointments. The vision before him stalled and he instead pictured the swirling coloured lights and the bounce of bass in his skull as his blood pumped the viscous threads of amplifiers through his system.
Every sound, every touch, every sight, had burned into his body and made the world an experience of torture. His appointment had found ecstasy in the onslaught of sensory overload and had pushed him to the brink of sanity. It had taken him nearly a week to recover and by then reports of his behaviour had made it to the Districts and his Tributes had already perished in the Games.
He'd stayed longer in the Capitol that year to pay for his failures as a Mentor.
As the memory began to lose its vividness the scenes before him start to reconnect, returning him to the present. He's standing at the base of an austere memorial of the bombing when his breath catches as he struggles to remain upright. This hadn't been here last time. The sight makes his lungs constrict painfully.
Before him are children carved in stone, huddled with blankets strewn around them. Above, hovering in the sky, are glistening relics of parachutes. It was the scene of the last stand in a painful recreation.
He didn't want to believe that they'd built such a stark reminder of that day. It wasn't the Capitol way. The old Capitol would have masked this atrocity and played its citizens as fools. This new Capitol didn't hide its viciousness – it displayed it openly. It was a form of punishment, not remembrance.
He secretly promised himself to never allow Katniss to return here. She could never see Prim standing forever as a marker of the rebellion.
He's wandered this new and unfamiliar city for hours before he finally reaches her doorstep. The sun has set and the sounds around him have faded into the muffled background as his memory clashes with the versions he'd known so well. This Capitol is no longer a glistening beacon of hatred. Its true colours are finally showing.
He doesn't want to knock. Is afraid to.
"Haymitch?" He doesn't have to. His shoulders tense as he puts down his bag and turns to see what she's become. Her hair is the most strikingly different as it lays in short darkly coloured layers about her head. Her skin looks almost human, a far cry from the Capitol product it had once been, even during the trial. The makeup, her cloak of insufferable disguise, is washed out and natural. She's thinner now. He watches suspiciously as her arm disengages from her companion who is at least twice her age.
She's not the Effie he knew.
Nothing is as it once was, he's realizing.
"I... I shouldn't have come." His mouth is dry and all he wants is a drink. This was a mistake. His feet carry him off the porch and in the opposite direction before he remembers his bag – it's lost to him now. There's no way he can retrieve it. He picks up his pace as his heart pounds in his chest. The Capitol overflows with horrors as it spans out before him. He needs to escape.
"Stop!" The sound roars past him and he feels the hand on his shoulder pulling him back from where he stands, paralyzed, in the street as a truck barrels toward him. He wanted the collision. To feel anything other than what he was feeling.
He refuses to lift his gaze from the ground, determined not to notice anything apart from her newly practical shoes. She's not the Effie he knew.
Her eyes are the same. She's crouching before him now, struggling to meet his eyes as he looks away again. He doesn't want to feel her near him. It will break him.
"Look at me you damn fool!" Her affected accent is nearly gone and she sounds almost real. The polish has vanished and all that remains is the District spit that he'd always associated with being so common. It wasn't the loss of the style that was destroying him – it was the loss of what he'd known and the fear of what else she'd changed. He met her eyes and tried not to picture the man she'd been standing beside not moments ago.
"Haymitch, what are you doing here? Where's Katniss?" Her voice borders on shrill as she looks around. It occurs to him that this whole visit could be construed as a funeral call and he pulls away quickly from her grasp.
"She's alive. She's in 12." His words are strained as he fights the internal war going on inside him.
"Then why are you..?" She's struggling to put the pieces together; he can read it in her face.
"You. But you've company so don't worry about it." He pushes back and turns on his heel hoping to escape with whatever dignity he can salvage. This was a terrible idea.
"Haymitch wait! That's not," He hasn't gotten far before she grips his collar forcing him to stumble backwards. "That's my father. Take off your drunk goggles already." He hadn't even bothered to make the connection she had a father. That her father could even still be alive – nobody lived long enough to have grown parents in the District – was beyond him.
He feels her arms wrap around him as his face is forced into the crook of her neck. He can feel her laughing and it spreads like wildfire through him as he breathes in her scent. He borders on being happy as they stand together in the darkened street.
He's found it. It. Whatever he had been looking for when he decided to get on that endless train. It's here with her.
And he's terrified of what to do now that he's found it.