CHAPTER 25

I feel the blood rush from my face. Haymitch must be able to see it, too, because a satisfied grin settles on his face.

"Oh, so I guess you hadn't considered that. Well that'll make a good addition to the show."
I clamp my hand over my mouth to stop myself from screaming. Haymitch puts a hand on my shoulder.
"Don't worry, Katniss. I had your most recent shipment of morphling formulated to have oral contraceptive hormones in it, too."
A flood of relief washes over me.
"You're a mess, Katniss. A damn mess. If you and Peeta didn't have me and Sae looking out for you, you'd be knocked up by now for sure. Well, no, you'd probably be dead before then. Died of malnutrition or an infection from bed sores or something. Self-injury, maybe."
"I'm a mess?" I say. "Look at the pot calling the kettle black."

But there's no way I can argue with him- as much as I want to. I know he's right. He's absolutely right. And so what if I'm a mess? We're all messes. It's part of being a Victor. It's part of having lived an impoverished life and forced to grow up too quickly with too little actual knowledge with which to arm myself.

"I've made my mistakes, sweetheart. I can at least guide you in the right direction. Well, maybe not the right direction but I can at least steer you away from certain and hopeless self-destruction."

I don't say anything. I feel too ashamed at the downward spiral my life has since taken. I feel like I don't really know what my purpose is anymore. I mean, this whole thing started as an effort to save my little sister and keep my mother safe. Now that I have neither of them to motivate me to succeed in whatever I happen to be doing, I feel completely and utterly lost. What's the point anymore anyway?

He kneels in front of me and takes my hands in his. I cringe at the affection and try to pull them away but he holds onto them and speaks to me in a low voice.

"Keeping you and Peeta famous and in the limelight is the only way I can keep you two safe and fed," he says in a slow and measured voice. He looks me square in the eye. "People are more likely to notice that you have gone missing if your wildly popular show is canceled and goes into syndication. I couldn't tell you that in front of the media or in front of Plutarch."

"How can I believe you?" I ask him. "How can I trust that this isn't just another story that you're feeding me?"

"If I didn't care about you two, why would I have gone through all this trouble to keep you alive all these years?"

"I don't know. To use us to fulfill your own political agenda?"

"Maybe a little. But if that were my sole motivation, dear girl, why would I have even bothered with either of you in the first place? Why would I be bothering with the two of you now? We have independence. If I didn't care, I could have easily fed you two to the Capitol months ago after your release. Remember how Finnick was sold? Let's just say he wasn't the only one familiar with that scene. I know the people you need to know to make some dirty cash and quick friends."

I look away, reminded once again how Peeta and I have had it relatively easy in some respects.

"Listen. Just go to the interview tonight and we'll take it from there. The interview is an integral part of the marketing for the show. We need to show that you and Peeta are still truly unscripted or they won't buy the show. Be coy. Keep your right hand folded over your left for the whole show. Keep them guessing. And for godssakes, let Peeta do the talking."

I've considered that maybe I'm keeping myself alive to ultimately make everything up to Peeta who unselfishly (well, maybe it wasn't entirely unselfish) had endured torture to make it back to me. Maybe I've owed him this. Maybe I need to endure this to make it back to him. I think it's the right thing to do but every fiber of my being disagrees and wants to revolt. I'm confused. Every option seems disagreeable and I feel trapped. How has Haymitch done it all these years? I think as his hand begins to turn the diamond-cut doorknob.

"Wait—Haymitch?"

He turns around. He says nothing. His face says nothing, either.

"Why did you put up with the fame and the media and all the obligations of being a Victor all these years? It's terrible."

He thinks about it for a moment and says slowly, carefully, as if he's weighing the importance of his words, "I was like you, Katniss. Initially. But soon I realized that…I wasn't alone. And nothing was going to stop the horror. Not then. The necessary things hadn't fallen into place to facilitate a coup just yet. But if I bailed and checked out completely or hung myself—" he looks into the distance briefly, probably fantasizing about the noose he'd never tied.

"I realized that if I didn't keep on being me and pursuing what was right, nothing would change. And hundreds of kids would just keep murdering each other, completely abandoning their humanness in the confusion of the Games," Haymitch continued. "My mentor was checked out and completely useless. Do you know what he said to me when I asked him if he had any advice?"

"'Stay alive?''" I countered, twisting my mouth to one side and alluding to Haymitch's first piece of advice.

"He told me to remember that the other kids are all my enemy. But I looked at Maysilee's wide, childlike eyes. She was so young: just twelve years old. And when I looked at her, I didn't see an enemy. I just saw a little girl that I had seen playing at school with her friends. She had no intention of hurting anyone. She had never had any thoughts of destroying the Capitol. None of that had crossed her mind. She was so small and terrified and—" His voices breaks and I feel my throat tightening to suppress my own sobs. I knew the feeling too well and Rue's small chocolate eyes staring up at me penetrated my thoughts.

"Maysilee wasn't my enemy. Even the Career who had nearly killed me wasn't my enemy. I realized something I had never heard anyone say: the Capitol is the real enemy. The greed, the apathy, the collective narcissism. I wanted to stick around and make sure no other District 12 Tribute forgot who the real enemy was. And four years ago…well," he says quietly with what I swear is the tiniest of genuine smiles, "I finally got two kids who already knew."

I nod my head in understanding and manage a small smile myself. For all his snark and rough exterior, I have to believe that Haymitch really has his head in the game and is headed in the right direction. It's just easy to get concerned since there's a fine line between genius and insanity.

And right on cue, Haymitch snaps back to his old self.
"Venia, contour her tits and sprinkle some glitter or whatever the hell it is that you do on there. We don't have much to work with and we've gotta work with what we've got. But hey," he adds, not one to deliver a half-hearted compliment without some kind of backhandedness, "At least it's far more than what we ever had to work with before."

"Thanks for noticing, Haymitch," I offer up dryly as he makes his exit.

"Hey, don't mention it," he says through the crack. "We have to make sure the audience is distracted by something so they don't pay attention to whatever comes out of your mouth." He closes the door before I can formulate a response.