Chaff, Seeder, Johanna, Mags, Finnick, Annie and me- we are all squished together on the sofa of level 11 in the Training Centre, watching the finale of the 74th Games. Nobody wanted Annie to be there, but it wasn't like there was anywhere else she could stay, not like there was anyone else she could be with. So she sits on Finnick's lap with her face buried in his shoulder, humming to block out the noise. Johanna looks a little annoyed at this display, but even she's not asked her to stop.
I sit gripping Seeder's hand so tightly I'm surprised that these talon-like false nails are not drawing blood. These Games... final showdowns are always hard for me to watch, but this one would be unbearable were it not for how invested I am in its two young heroes. We victors are, as usual, silent for the most part, unmoving as we see the horrors they endure. Nobody bats an eyelid as we watch Cato get torn apart, and I am not surprised. But as the sun rises in the Arena and Templesmith announces that there can still only be one winner, the room is filled with outcry.
"They can't do that, can they?" Finnick asks, one hand curling protectively around Annie's waist like they're going to take her as well.
"They can do whatever they want," Seeder replies, a trace of bitterness in her normally calm voice. Next to her, Chaff sucks the dregs from his liquor bottle.
Haymitch - how is he reacting to this? Angrily, most likely. He will be in a hovercraft above the Arena right now, waiting for one of them to slaughter the other and utterly, horrifically powerless to do anything, his ingenious attempts to manipulate Seneca and the Games in ashes. And he will be alone, too - I doubt they will allow the escort to go with him, and I don't suppose she would be the best company for him at the moment anyway. "Has anyone seen Effie?" I ask, and get only shrugs in response.
The woman's ears must have been burning, because the elevator doors slide open and everyone turns from the screen to see Trinket standing awkwardly in the hallway.
"I'm sorry." She wrings her hands, which, like her cheeks, are red with worry behind her pale cosmetics. "I just - I couldn't watch it alone."
Suddenly I see her for what she is - a woman a couple years younger than myself, who could have frittered her life away in the Capitol, but instead decided to help kids survive the Games. And most escorts wouldn't even bother with a district like 12, but here she is.
I pat the empty space next to me, and she totters forward gratefully. Johanna raises her eyebrows, but nobody else says anything and everyone's attention returns to the screen.
Katniss' fingers fumble with the pouch on her belt, freeing it. Peeta sees it and his hand clamps on her wrist.
"No, I won't let you," he says, almost reflexively.
"Trust me," Katniss whispers. He holds her gaze for a long moment, then lets her go. She loosens the top of the pouch and pours some of the nightlock they had found earlier into his palm, then fills her own. "On the count of three?"
Peeta leans down and kisses her, very gently - I can almost hear the Capitol sighing, an involuntary response since I have spent so long being concerned with nothing but their reactions to tributes and myself. "The count of three," he says.
They stand, their backs pressed together, their empty hands locked tight.
"They must really love each other," I murmur, and Johanna snorts.
"Sure," she says. "That's totally why she's doing it."
What? What does she mean by that? I open my mouth to argue - and then I remember how utterly unimportant my worries are at this moment, and return my attention to Katniss and Peeta.
"One," they say together, "two… three!"
The berries barely touch their lips as Templesmith's voice echoes out around the Arena, around Panem, around the whole forsaken world. "Stop! Stop! Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the victors of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games, Katnisss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark! I give you - the tributes of District Twelve!"
Relief is the first thing I feel - my heart starting again, my fists unclenching. Although the other victors in the room are from different districts, by this point they were all rooting for Twelve to win- as was most of the country, I think. The second thing I feel is Seeder's arms wrap around me.
"Well done," she whispers, and I cock my head to one side.
"Why?"
"You helped this happen, sweetheart. Don't forget that."
"I guess," I mumble, but before I can say anything else Chaff shoves a glass in my face.
"Celebratory alcohol!"
I take it and down half the drink in one, and he raises an eyebrow at me. "You're a bad influence on me," I explain, and he sniggers.
"Glad to hear it."
Behind him, Finnick is coaxing Annie back into the real world.
"It's okay Annie, it's over. I'm here, don't worry."
She looks at him through curtains of hair. "Who won?" she asks softly.
"Both of them," he tells her, and she smiles.
%
I wait for him on the roof of the Training Centre, just as he did for me after my own Games. As always, I don't hear him coming until he's stood a couple of feet behind me and coughs loudly. The only person who could ever sneak up on me.
I spin round, lean back on the balcony railing. It's the evening after the initial live interviews with Caesar; his suit is crumpled, I guess he must have slept in it. He raises a half empty bottle of liquor at me in greeting.
"Well done," I say, wind buffeting around the garden, "how does it feel to have mentored two tributes to victory in the same year?"
He stares at me, expression far more serious than what I was expecting. "Denna, you - never mind." He upends the bottle and I narrow my eyes.
"What's happened?"
He glances round and walks towards me, leaning next to me against the railing. "When she held out the berries," he says slowly, carefully, "why do you think she did it?"
"For love," I say without hesitating - then Johanna's comment rises in my memory. Now that I have time to think about it I allow my mind to work out why it had upset me, and realize that it is because, like so much of Johanna, it didn't fit with the perfect picture that had been created, a picture I often fail to see beyond without the help of those closest to me. "Or… defiance."
"It smacked of rebellion," he explains, voice low. "Maybe not in the Capitol, but in the districts… it's the spark they needed, for a girl from 12 to break the one victor rule."
Now that I'm properly thinking about it, now that the floodgates have been opened, I remember every little thing that whispered of something bigger, more dangerous, than anything that I alone could ever have conceived. "There's been unrest in the districts… Eleven's practically in uprising… a full-scale rebellion."..."Even now, they are plotting against the Capitol, waiting for a spark to start a revolution."... The panic in Claudius Templesmith's voice… the pieces all fall together now, and that glossy picture falls away, replaced by something massive and unquantifiable and... hopeful.
"Oh, shit," I breathe, staring at him. "But that… that's good, right?"
"Is it? Now these two kids are the faces of a revolution. Mainly her, but that's just… Look. If you were Snow, what would you do?"
My blood turns cold and sluggish, like sap from a long dead tree. "He can't kill them, Haymitch, surely he wouldn't -"
"You'd be surprised at what he can do," Haymitch says with a dark look, the kind you can only find on the face of a victor.
I think of the rumours I have collected over the years from pillow talk, of sabotage and poison and the sores in the President's mouth. That afternoon years ago, when he invited me to his mansion. Oh, I was scared then. Not of dying, but of him. "I don't think I would be, actually."
Haymitch takes that in his stride and continues talking, leaving it to me to keep up. "You heard from Seneca Crane recently? Since the finale, to be precise?"
"No."
"Neither has anyone else."
"No," I say, "he's just - he's just busy! There's a lot to do for him, of course there is. It's horrible to say something like that! Snow's awful, but there's no way he'd assassinate someone with such a high profile." I refuse to believe it- Seneca Crane, assassinated? He was harmless- as much a Gamemaker could be, anyway.
"You think? Head Gamemaker's never been the most stable job in the world, and besides, accidents happen." His tone is almost mocking. Haymitch has never been one for undue sympathy, of course, but this time it really gets to me.
"Don't!" I snap at him, repelled by how, how cruel he is being about this. I can't even look at him. I think of Seneca Crane, hiring me for company because there was nobody else he could trust. Who called the tributes by their first names. Who never left a mark on my body, and would have someone drive me home. There are malicious people in the Capitol and there are ignorant ones; he was one of the latter. I realize I'm sorry he's dead, and I'm disgusted at myself for it. He organised the deaths of children, I remind myself, and he did it for entertainment. Haymitch may not be kind, but he is right. Seneca was not a good man, and he knew what he was doing. But still, he was a person... a man who found himself out of his depth in shark-infested waters. And he did not deserve this.
"Denna. Denna."
"Hm? Oh, sorry." I wrap my arms around myself, swimming in guilt and a cocktail of other muddled emotions. I try to get my head above them by thinking rationally, like my companion is doing, and reach out for help. "What's going to happen now?" I ask.
Haymitch shrugs, staring moodily into the middle distance. "We try and convince everyone the girl did it for love."
"Did she?"
"I don't even think she knows that. But in the meantime they play the happy couple, and we wait and see what the bastards come up with for next year."
Of course, the 75th Games will be a Quarter Quell. Of which the only living survivor is the man standing next to me, drinking liquor like water. "It's going to be awful for you," I realize, "isn't it?"
"Thanks for reminding me, darling."
My weathered heart breaks for him.
"Haymitch? Haymitch! Haymitch Abernathy, get back in the Training Centre this instant! Your victors need you!" A funnily accented voice calls from the doorway to the roof.
"Duty calls," he murmurs, taking a last swig of the bottle and handing it to me. I recognise the shift in tone, know that talk of rebellion is over.
"I think it was Effie, actually."
"Hilarious."
"See you in six months," I say. "Victory Tour, remember?"
"Yeah, yeah."
"And Haymitch?"
"What?"
"Congratulations." I press my mouth against his, sliding my arms around his neck, and I feel his shoulders relax as he leans into me, with his hands resting against the barrier on either side of my waist. Every awful thing, every terrible threat hanging over us, fades into the background, into whit noise when we kiss. Our entire world exists only of us. We are the closest thing each other has to an escape. And I want to give him that, at least.
I pull myself up to sit on the railing, legs wrapping around him, and his arms move to steady me, on my back and slipping under the hem of my dress. I bite down on his lower lip in a bid to keep quiet, creating new knots and tangles in his hair as I grip onto it and tilt his head backwards, rising up with my arms on his shoulders and kissing him from above. I really don't need all these layers of clothing between us and I go to get rid of them as quickly as possible, scrambling for the feel of skin. I love the way he touches me, hungry and tender and desperate all at once, I wish it could be like this constantly, I wish that my life was nothing but him… then I remember who's waiting, and that wishes never work.
Breaking away takes as much strength as it did for me to survive the last night of my Games. It's about as painful, too. "You'd better go," I say, "before Effie comes out and catches us."
"Caught me doing worse," he mutters, and I roll my eyes as I push him away from me and hop back down off the barrier.
"Go, Twelve."
He steals one last kiss and turns away, stumbling slightly as he walks to the door. As he opens it, he hesitates a moment. "Why?" he asks me, turning back around.
"Why what?"
"Why let my two-a-penny escort watch the finale with you?"
What sort of question is that? "Because it was kind," I say. "Why else?"
He laughs, shaking his head. "G'night, Lazuli."
I wait a few minutes, then follow his path back to the elevator.