There are only 4 chapters left after this one. We're in the final part, people. I hope you like this one =) Let me know!

25 :

The plan was a good plan, Haymitch told himself again and again as they trudged along the 47th, or at least it was as good a plan as could be.

"I don't like the plan." Gale grumbled, kicking a pebble off the road.

"You don't like anything anymore." Katniss hissed through her teeth, her eyes darting all around them, ready to let an arrow fly at the smallest sign of danger. Haymitch was clutching his own knife, Gale and Effie both had their guns out…

They had left the car and the rest of the group on the road while they went on a reckon party on foot to try and find Effie's former boyfriend. He didn't quite know how he felt about that. He didn't like the idea of another man competing for her attention and he didn't like the idea that someone else could come first for her. He was selfish. And probably a little jealous of that man he hadn't yet met but for whom she was so willingly ready to risk her life.

Effie was strangely silent.

"You never mentioned a boyfriend before." he commented after a while, low enough that the kids wouldn't hear. He would have preferred to take the truck but Plutarch had pointed out they should protect the supplies first and with people supposedly ambushing cars… It was only a fifteen minutes walk from the cars to the motel from what they had estimated but still.

"We need to go this way." Katniss said, waving at the trees bordering the road. "We cut through and we're at the motel in five minutes. I think." The last part was added with a wince.

"I agree." Gale concurred. "Be careful, the ground will be uneven and we don't need anyone breaking their ankles."

The teenagers took point, they always were more at ease in the forest than anyone else. Haymitch and Effie fell back, keeping an eye out for an eventual threat.

"It was never like us." she answered at last. It was barely a whisper, yet it was defensive and almost angry. "Seneca and I were desperate to make it work because we couldn't find anyone else and we were yearning for the perfect partner. It wasn't love, Haymitch, I know that now but he's still my friend."

He pondered that for a while and then shrugged. "I'm hardly perfect, sweetheart."

"Precisely." She shot him an amused glance and he was relieved to see the small genuine smile on her lips. "I am, though, and you know what they say about how opposites attract…"

He snorted and shook his head. "You're so full of yourself."

"And you love it." she replied with a grin.

"Maybe." he smirked. It was always fun to bring her down a peg or two.

The familiar hiss of an arrow being released startled Haymitch and Effie alike. Katniss was already retrieving her arrow from a lone zombie's head. She wiped the point on her pants despite Effie's cringing and notched it back in place.

"We're close." Gale said, peering through the trees. "Stay focused."

Haymitch was a bit miffed at being told what to do but he held his tongue. The teenagers were easier to tick off than a bomb nowadays.

The parking lot was deserted. Katniss took down the only zombies shuffling their feet their way.

"Do we team up?" the girl hesitated. "It would be quicker."

"Quicker to get killed." Haymitch snapped, exchanging his knife for his gun. "We stay together." The motel was a grim brown building that Haymitch despised at once. Too many hiding places, too many opportunities for an ambush. "We will secure a perimeter around it first." Nobody discussed his orders but he saw Effie's eyes darting with impatience to the reception sign. He placed a hand on her shoulder briefly to make sure he had her attention. "Don't wander off."

She nodded. He was relieved to see her keeping her word, she stayed right next to him as they trekked around the building, a few feet behind Katniss and Gale. The teenagers didn't make a sound as they moved around but Haymitch and Effie kept stomping on twigs or plastic garbage that had never been picked up. It was too loud in the silence, Katniss tensed more than once. She looked on edge and Haymitch wondered if she was as bothered as he was by the eerie atmosphere surrounding the motel.

"Something's wrong." Gale whispered just as he was about to say it himself.

The silence was too heavy.

"Perhaps I should call out to Seneca…" Effie suggested. She kept adjusting her grip on her gun. "He will recognize my voice…"

"Bad idea." Haymitch and Katniss replied at the same time.

"I don't think he can hear you anyway." Gale sighed, dropping his gun. "Well… That was a waste of time."

The boy had wandered off to the edge of the wood. It took Haymitch a few seconds to glimpse what he was talking about. He barely had time to grab Effie's arm and pulled her against his chest.

"Don't look." he ordered. He tried to keep her away from the sight but she struggled.

"What is going on?" she hissed. "Let me go! What on earth…" Effie was cunning and too devious for her own good. She stomped on his foot. It took him by surprise and he let go. He tried to force her away again but it was too late. "No… No…" Her voice broke when she saw the figure hanging from the tree, swaying quietly in the light breeze. "Seneca…"

She brought a hand to her mouth, her eyes filled with tears and it was all Haymitch could do to open his arm again. The gun clattered on the ground, falling from her numb fingers, and she buried her face in Haymitch's neck, clutching at him like a drowning man would clutch at a life preserver. He felt her burning tears rolling down his skin, dampening his coat. It was the silent kind of crying, thought, the worst kind. He would have welcomed sobs over those tensed attempts at control.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart." He meant it despite his reservations about having a former boyfriend of hers in their midst. She had just lost a piece of home. Maybe her final one.

Katniss cut the rope with a well-placed arrow and the corpse fell to the ground in a loud thump. Effie shuddered in his arms, he tightened his hold but it didn't seem to help.

Gale let out a string of curses. "He didn't do it himself."

"Are you sure?" Katniss frowned, hitching closer to the dead man. The girl hated that, Haymitch knew, the dead and the wounded weren't something she was facing easily. He would have looked himself but Effie didn't seem ready to let him go and he didn't want to bring her closer than necessary.

"Pretty sure, except if you think someone can hang themselves with their brain already blown out." Gale retorted.

Effie let out a small whimper and Haymitch glared at the boy. "Ever heard of something called tact?"

"Look who's talking." the teenager muttered but his face softened when he glanced at the woman in his arms. "Sorry, Effie."

"We should go back to the others." Katniss suggested. "I don't like this."

Haymitch gave a sharp nod. He didn't like it either. Crane had talked of people ambushing others on the radio and putting two and two together wasn't exactly hard. Wrong time, wrong place.

"We have to bury him." Effie insisted, pushing away from Haymitch. She was unsteady on her feet but she stood proud, chin jutting in the air as if to dare them to contradict her.

"We don't have time." Gale refused straight out. "The others might be in danger. It wouldn't make a difference anyway. Animals or zombies will dig him up."

Effie's mouth pursed in a hard line. She picked up her gun and walked closer to Crane's body with a determined spring. Haymitch followed her, worried she would lose it. She didn't though. She was always so much stronger than he gave her credit for, it should stop surprising him but for some reason it didn't.

She kneeled next to the corpse. It wasn't a pretty sight and he was certain she would wake up screaming that night if she even managed to fall asleep at all. She reached out as if she wanted to touch Crane but then she drew back her hand before she made contact.

"I can't leave him like that." she whispered.

Haymitch and Katniss stared at each other while Gale simply stood there impatiently, waiting for one of them to bring Effie back on tracks. The teenager was taking airs since he had started hanging out with the rebels and Haymitch didn't like that one bit.

"We will burn him." Katniss said finally. "We will put him in the motel and start a fire."

"Not a bad plan." Haymitch agreed. "It might even lead those people away from us."

"We don't have time." Gale argued.

"We will take it." he retorted. His decision was definitive and even though the boy grumbled and kept muttering how foolishly sentimental they were being, he helped finding flammable things and he also helped him move the body since Katniss and Effie were squeamish.

The fire caught well enough, they didn't wait to see if the whole motel would burn to the ground. They headed back to the road through the woods, keeping an eye out for eventual threats.

"You're okay, sweetheart?" he asked, low enough the teenagers wouldn't hear. He urged her faster with a hand on her shoulder, eager to escape the dark smoke that was starting to make his throat hitch.

"He was a good man." she simply answered.

It was all he got from her as they hurried back to the rest of the group, concerned that they might have been attacked while they were gone.

Their worry was unfounded though.

Everyone was exactly where they had left them. Peeta and Prim were still laughing about some fantasy book they both liked, Annie was still looking in the distance, Coin was still bitching to Plutarch, and Johanna was watching over the kids and the pregnant woman as if she expected them to be attacked. Her behavior and the new cars arrangement Effie had made that morning helped Haymitch relax a bit about the whole "Coin issue". The President was starting to get too pushy, too impatient to get to Thirteen. That could become dangerous.

Of course, Johanna and Effie's sudden vigilance made him suspicious that they had spied on one of his conversations with Coin but he couldn't care less at the moment. He was tired of the President's insinuations anyway. Her recurrent hints that they would be quicker if they simply left the "weaker" ones behind didn't set well with him.

They kept the explanations short. Plutarch ushered everyone in the cars, anxious to get as far away from there as possible in case the people who hanged Crane were still around. When Prim started towards the truck, Johanna herded her back to the pick-up not so discreetly, laughing about wanting to ride with Gale again and Annie's difficulties with driving lately. It was a poor excuse but no one seemed to find it odd so Jo and Gale went in the SUV with the rebels, Katniss and Prim took the pick-up and Peeta, Annie, Effie and Haymitch went back to the truck.

Nobody protested Effie climbing behind the wheel or her tinkering with the CD player. Haymitch even refrained from commenting on her music choice– which was as bad as ever. Coin took point so that meant the truck was at the rear of the procession of cars, behind Katniss who was so slow a driver, Effie was practically going at a snail pace. He doubted that helped her. He knew her enough to know she was yearning to drive fast, to the limit of dangerous, to clear her head.

They rarely allowed Annie to take the wheel because she spaced out a lot and before too long, Haymitch wondered if they shouldn't have applied the same restrictions to Effie for now. Peeta was trying to make conversation but it was labored and Effie didn't make any attempts at participating. She slowed down and sped up as if on autopilot, her eyes slightly unfocused but bright with unshed tears. She declined food when they offered and only drank some water because he insisted.

The day felt endless.

Night was long upon them when Haymitch finally had enough of her apathy. "Let's switch. You drove all day."

Peeta and Annie were already asleep, pressed against their respective windows. Annie's arms were wrapped around her baby bump.

"I'm fine." Effie replied mechanically.

"No, you're not." he snapped. "And I'm not in the mood to crash into a tree. Stop the car, we're switching."

"I said I'm fine." she hissed through clenched teeth.

"Learn how to lie to me and try again, sweetheart." he snorted. "Now stop being pigheaded."

"Did you just call me a pig?" She glared at him with all her might. He didn't even blink.

"Effie, you're tired, stop this truck before you crash it and kill us all." It was harsh and unsympathetic. She turned her head away in a huff and then finally complied. They switched places quickly and efficiently. He didn't even try to grope her when she straddled him briefly to get on the passenger's side. "Eat something."

He didn't care about Coin's and her stupid laws on how food should only be passed around at specific times. He didn't care much about Coin in general. He hadn't changed his mind about her. If anything, each passing day convinced him they should head in the opposite direction she was going.

There was a box of crackers on the front seat, she took a handful and munched on one unhappily.

"Don't order me about." she complained weakly. "I am not a child."

"Then don't act like one." he shrugged, ignoring her glaring. "Do you want to talk about it?"

He would regret this offer, he knew.

"Since when do you want me to talk?" she retorted. "You say this just so you can tell me to shut up in ten minutes."

He rolled his eyes. "I will let you chatter all you want and I will even pretend to listen, Princess. Just stop… You're hurting on your own. You're not on your own." She didn't bark back at once so he risked a glance. She was leaning against the door, chewing on another of the tasteless cracker with a faraway look on her face. "Do you want a hug?"

He would reach the end of his patience before long.

"A hug would be… appreciated." she whispered finally, creeping closer until he could wrap his arm around her. It wasn't practical at all to do that while driving but if it meant she would feel better… She settled against him with a sigh. "I apologize, my behavior was unacceptable."

"It's unacceptable when you dash off in a store full of zombies for new shoes." he snorted. "Today was understandable."

She burrowed against his side, trying to find a more comfortable position. She settled for burying her face his neck, her legs folded under her on the seat.

"You wouldn't have liked Seneca." she said at last. "He was too much like me."

"I can only take a fabulous person at a time." he snorted but he traced soothing circles with his thumb on her shoulder to let her know he didn't mean it.

"He was fabulous." she smiled. "Once, he had to dye his beard blue for a commercial. We thought everyone would laugh at him but it launched a fashion trend. Seneca and I used to laugh a lot. It was always easy. We were young, we were famous and we had money…"

"Everything I don't have." he pointed out.

"And that's why I love you." she shrugged. "Life with Seneca was easy but life with you is real." She shook her head. "He was a dear friend. He was always more my friend than anything else. I thought he was dead for months and now…"

"He came back to life just to die again." Haymitch finished for her. "It's sad but it tends to happen nowadays, sweetheart."

"I suppose so." She gave him a small smile that didn't reach her eyes. "There was never a point in being jealous, you know."

"I wasn't." he scoffed. Besides, the man was dead.

She stared at him for a few seconds, clearly debating something in her head. She was about to ask if there was a chance of former girlfriends of his popping up along the way, he just knew it. Fortunately, she didn't say anything in the end. She simply stretched like a cat before settling in for sleep like she had done the previous day and countless nights before they joined the group: curled up on her side with her head on his thigh.

There was a blanket tossed by Peeta over the back of the seat earlier, he wrapped her into it as efficiently as he could one-handed and with his eyes mainly on the road ahead.

"Who do you think the people who killed him were?" she asked.

"I don't know and if we're lucky, we will never find out." he offered. "A world like that… Some people will take it as a game or a competition. Survival of the fittest and all that shit."

"They're still out there." Effie shivered. "They could hurt the children."

He combed her blond hair with his fingers soothingly. "Nobody will hurt our kids, sweetheart. I will kill them first."

The promise helped her fall asleep.

Of course, Haymitch mused later, he should never have promised anything. There are some kind of promises you simply couldn't keep no matter how much you tried.

When the pick-up abruptly swerved in front of him a little after dawn, several things shot through his head in the absurd space of a second. First, that Katniss had been driving all day and all night and that they had completely forgotten to send someone to replace her. Second, that he was tired and his reflexes were sluggish. Third, that Effie should really have put her seat belt on.

He braked and turned the wheel because that was the only thing to do, sending the truck into a loop that ended with the side of the hood colliding with the trunk of a tree. It happened so quickly, no one had time to scream or shout. Haymitch barely grunted when the belt dug painfully into his chest, holding him in place, already sensing the deep bruising it would leave. Annie was wearing hers too and simply whimpered when Peeta – who wasn't buckled – was flung into her. Effie was projected forward, her head hit the side of the wheel but it could have been worse, it would have been worse if she had been against his chest and not lying down.

She sat up slowly, a hand pressed on the bleeding gush on her forehead. Head wounds always bled so there was no point in getting concerned about the dark smudges rolling down her face, Haymitch reminded himself, still a bit stunned.

Being stunned was a luxury they couldn't afford.

The first shot guns started before they a had even completely realized what had happened.

"Stay in the car!" he barked, grabbing his gun and rolling down on the road, expecting zombies.

They weren't zombies.

Zombies didn't shoot back.

The situation, he saw at once, could have been worse. The rebels' SUV had run straight into a makeshift barricade in the middle of the road but everyone was already outside and shooting in the direction of the woods bordering the road where he could see shadows moving, obviously armed. They seemed to follow a woman whose teeth caught the light every time she shouted an order, they looked like fangs.

The pick-up was in the middle of the road, on its flank. Katniss was out and letting arrows fly but Prim was nowhere to be seen. If she was clever, she was hiding in the car.

He joined in the shooting even though his aim wasn't accurate, not totally surprised when Effie crawled out of the car and crouched next to him, still trying to stop the bleeding on her forehead. She didn't try to use her gun, she simply made sure he never went out of ammos. Peeta started shooting from the other side of the car, urging Annie to lay low.

Haymitch was still stunned from the crash – he wasn't sure his head hadn't hit the wheel too and he regretted never having taken the time to have the airbag replaced – time seemed to be running its course very weirdly. His ears were ringing with gun shots. He could hear Coin and Johanna screaming instructions in the distance but he wasn't able to actually hear them. At some point he saw a girl – small, blond hair glimmering in the sun, not much older than the kids – sneaking behind Katniss with a knife, he tried to shoot but his hands were shaking too much so he ran to them instead.

The girl was good with a knife and Katniss didn't have any range to shoot. The struggle took the three of them away from the pick-up and closer to the rebels. Johanna had already foreseen that the truck would be left without any protection other than Effie's unreliable skills at the moment and Peeta's awkward shooting and was sprinting toward it.

Katniss kept saying she had to go back to Prim in the pick-up but the path was blocked, they were shot at each time they took a step in that direction. There was an odd smell in the air but Haymitch didn't have time to find out what it was. He was still very much trying to keep their ambushers at bay and to keep an eye on the truck Johanna wasn't quite succeeding in reaching.

Yet, the smell was sending alarms ringing in his head.

"Stop!" he screamed at the top of his lungs when he finally placed it. "STOP!"

But no one listened to him, bullets were flying in every direction. Coin and Gale escalated the SUV and laid low on the roof to get a better angle and…

"STOP!" he shouted at them. All he got was Plutarch's attention. The man's eyes widened as he, too, realized the danger.

Gas.

His answering screams for caution were the last thing Haymitch heard before the deafening explosion made all the other sounds disappear. The blast projected him and Katniss a few feet away, the heat was so unbearable he could swear they were on fire… He tried to cover the girl with his body, to shield her, but she struggled free and ran to the burning pick-up, screaming her sister's name.

He didn't hear it.

He couldn't hear anything but an unending hissing.

He ran after her awkwardly and tackled her to the ground before she could throw herself into the blaze – he had no doubt she would.

The others remained shell-shocked. No one was shouting anymore and he figured their ambushers had gone because the pick-up had probably been their main target all along anyway.

His right ear popped and he regained some hearing in time to hear Effie's desperate howl. She dashed for the pick-up, exactly like Katniss had done, except Haymitch was too far and too busy keeping the girl down to stop her.

He had never been so grateful for Johanna's quick reflexes. She grabbed Effie around the waist and dragged her away, shouting the same thing over and over again.

She's already dead.

And it wasn't until that precise moment that it sank in for Haymitch.

Prim was dead.

No more joking about teaching him proper music taste, no more attack hugs from behind when he wasn't expecting it, no more innocent laughter…

Prim was dead.

Katniss stopped struggling under him.

He pressed his forehead against the floor and closed his eyes.

There was nothing else to do.