An anon on tumblr asked: Not a prompt but about your last drabble: how did Haymitch feel after she had been rescued and he saw all her injuries etc?
I don't know how else to answer this other than to turn it into a drabble. So this is actually in response to Nobody to Anyone, in the previous chapter. I thought i'll share it here too.
They wouldn't let him see her, wouldn't let him enter her room. Not even when he told the doctor that they were engaged. It was a terrible lie because the doctor's eyes flickered to her fingers and found no ring, not even a previous indentation of a supposed ring that could have been lost while she was in prison.
He watched her from the glass window. Haymitch stood by the window for so long that he managed to pace his breathing with hers, slow and steady, like a metronome.
The doctor and the nurses wouldn't tell him what was wrong with her either. But he saw the blood staining the white bandages on her back as she lay unconscious face down on the bed. It must be bad, whatever it was because he'd been here for hours and the nurses had already changed the dressings twice.
It made him feel hollow and helpless to see her looking terribly pale and lifeless. He annoyed the nurses while he was there, too.
"Can you … just make sure she's breathing?" he asked for the third time. Timing his own breathing with hers was no longer enough. He needed to make sure she was still alive.
"Mr. Abernathy, look at the heart monitor. Her heart's beating."
"Just… Please," the word escaped from his lips.
The nurse sighed. She held the glass in front of Effie's mouth and when he saw it clouded over, he gave the nurse a tight lip smile and nodded.
XxX
He stole her medical notes one day and read through the file with mounting horror. Haymitch looked up briefly from the file to her prone form and wondered how she managed to stay alive.
"You're not supposed to have that file, Mr. Abernathy," the same nurse said tersely. But her eyes were soft and filled with pity.
"She should be dead," he whispered.
"Sometimes miracles happen. And she is a miracle, isn't she? Your beautiful, lady angel. Survived against all the odds."
"She's not mine -" his mouth snapped shut. He remembered the lie he told. He thought no one had believed him but apparently, this nurse had. "Yes. Yes, she is."
XxX
The doctor noticed him hanging around the corridor when he was not occupied in Command and told him that Effie wouldn't be waking up anytime soon, not with such extensive injuries.
"You don't know her. She's stubborn," he shook his head.
Effie opened her eyes three days later surprising the medical team. There was a flurry of activities as they worked to make sure that everything was as it should be with her. He watched quietly from his spot by the glass window.
The nurse stopped as she passed by him and gave Haymitch a small smile. "Another miracle. Your lady seems full of it."
He nodded. There was a lump in his throat and he couldn't speak. Her room was empty now and he had been given the clearance to see her but he stayed rooted to the spot.
It was then that Effie turned to look at him and her gaze burnt through his soul. It was the same look he gave Snow each time he saw that man, one full of hatred and a strong burning desire to kill. She was looking at him that way and suddenly, he felt the walls of the hospital closing in on him. He pressed his palm flat on the glass wall and with one final look at her, Haymitch fled.
He wasn't her miracle. He was her nightmare. Effie Trinket created her own miracles and she doesn't need him.
I'm sorry for another angsty thing. I'll get to the happy stories soon.