I think I might regret asking for this prompt but... at the end of Catching Fire, Effie begs Haymitch not to leave her behind, he obviously can't take her with him. Then when they rescue her, she makes him promise he won't leave her (again) and then... well he comes back to 12 with Katniss and Peeta... if you want you can end this in some kind of forgiving happy ending, or you can leave it like this...

Lies sweet lies

"You're leaving." Her whisper is breathless and a little frightened. Her hands are shaking, her heart is racing and she feels dizzy. She's standing there, on the doorstep of his room, and he barely glances back before putting things in a bag as quickly as he can. Clothes, bottles of liquors, mementos… It's in the dead of night and she was asleep when the noises woke her up. He isn't supposed to be in his room. He is supposed to be in the living-room watching the Games. It's his turn. But, of course, he's leaving. Something big is happening out there, she has seen the brewing storm in the Districts. She has seen the impact Katniss and Peeta have, she's not stupid. And that mockingjay dress… Cinna is nowhere to be found, Portia is desperate and Haymitch… Haymitch has been avoiding her questions since the Reaping.

"Not now, sweetheart." he says. "Go back to bed."

He zips the bag close, grabs his jacket and flings both of them over his shoulder.

"I can be ready in five minutes." she hears herself say. "Don't… Don't leave me behind." She's scared, terrified even. Cinna's gone. People are disappearing left and right. She hasn't been as careful as she ought to with her opinions, she knows she said things sometimes that made some people frown. And she's District Twelve's escort. They will catch her. They will… "Please, Haymitch. Take me with you."

He closes his eyes and lets the bag and the jacket slid to the ground before stepping closer. She's engulfed in his embrace but it isn't as comforting as it used to be. One of his hand tangles in her hair, his other arm is wrapped around her waist, she clings to his shirt for dear life. "I can't." he mumbles against her hair. "I'm sorry, Effie, I can't."

"Please." She isn't above begging at this point. She isn't above crawling on the ground to seek his protection. She can't get rid of this ominous feeling of foreboding since the Quarter Quell announcement. She's so sure it's going to end badly for her. She's so sure… "Don't leave me." The tears fall before she can even try to get them in check. "If you love me, don't leave me."

His mouth crashes on hers but she's irresponsive. She can't kiss him back, she's crying too hard and it feels too much like a goodbye. "You will be safe." he promises, but she won't. She knows she won't. "I made arrangements. You go home to your apartment first thing in the morning and you stay there, you hear me? They will come for you." He presses a kiss against her forehead, her cheek, her mouth but she can't stop crying. She feels like she will never see him again. She feels like… "I can't take you with me now, Effie, it's too dangerous. I want you safe."

Safe is with him, she wants to say but the words remain stuck in her throat. They don't come out when he kisses her again, they don't come out when he lets go of her to grab his jacket and his bag, and they don't come out when he stops on the doorstep for a second. But he doesn't look back and she can't do anything but collapse on his bed and cry her eyes out.

She's not surprised when Peacekeepers swarm in before the night is through. She doesn't even try to resist when they arrest her. It's odd, though, how the words she couldn't tell Haymitch when he left seem to be permanently stuck in her throat. It's like she won't be able to say anything until those words have come out. But they won't, they won't ever come out because she's so sure, deep down, that she will never see him again…

Her questioners aren't pleased with her silence. They try to reason with her, to bargain with her, to beat the answers they seek and she doesn't know out of her… They get creative and she withdraws even more. She screams a lot but she doesn't actually form words. She can't. By the time they bring Peeta in, she has lost all notion of time or place. She isn't sure she could speak even if she wanted to, and she very much wants to at that point because they use her to teach the drugged boy Katniss is a mutt, a monster the rebels are using. They tell Peeta she knew everything, that she was working with Haymitch all along to get Katniss to the rebels, and by the time they're done, Peeta looks at her with hatred and loathing and when they finally let him alone with her, he tries to kill her. Still, the words do not come. She doesn't beg for his mercy, she doesn't try to tell him it's all lies, she just lays there and waits for the blows to stop, for his hands to stop strangling her. She feels dead. She feels empty. She wants to go back in time when life was an easy and frivolous thing. She wants to go back in time when she wasn't in love with someone who left her behind.

They try to make her hate Haymitch, to tell her he abandoned her so there's no reason for her to be loyal to him. They tell her he used her. They tell her he only fucked her – they say fucked and she bristles a little because it isn't like that, it was never like that, it was passionate and often loving and it never was a mere sexual affair, even in the beginning – because he was manipulating her. They tell her he slept with hundreds of women when he was with her. They tell her he was sleeping with Katniss and Johanna and every woman she has ever been friends with. They tell her he doesn't love her and that one hurt, it hurt a lot, so they tell her again and again until she more or less believes it because she has begged him not to leave her if he loved her and he did so… They tell her President Snow knows she was confused and how foolish you can be when you're in love. They tell her he would grant her a pardon if she helps them. They tell her Haymitch is dead. They tell her Haymitch is being tortured right now and they would stop if only she would tell them what she knows.

But she knows nothing and she has nothing to tell.

They get bored with her.

One day, they don't show up to torture her and they seem to forget about her. It's worse in a way because she's utterly alone now. She should hate Haymitch, she thinks, and she does a little but not all the way because she loves him. Love is weird. You can never get rid of it even when it's a poison running through your veins. And her love for Haymitch is very much venomous.

They forget about her and months pass. They feed her once a day and that's how she counts the days, the weeks… No one talks to her, no one even looks at her. She begins to forget. Small things at first but important ones, like the smell of rain or fresh baked bread, the exact shade of pink of her favorite wig, the sound of her own voice… And then, it's like someone's digging holes in her memories. She forgets her parent's faces, her friends'… Haymitch's is the last to go but it's the absolute worst because one morning she wakes up and she doesn't remember. She tries to. She knows he has grey eyes and she knows the shape of his mouth by heart but… she can't picture it. Soon, the four walls of her cell is all she knows. The small crack on the ceiling by the door, the faded white of the sink and the toilet, the pungent smell of her body as it slowly rots away in its own filth.

When the door finally opens after months of captivity, the corridor lights are too bright and the soldier on the doorstep – not a Peacekeeper, because he's wearing all black – is too loud. She shrinks back in the corner of her cell and begins to rock, wishing for the people entering her cell to go away, to leave her alone.

One of them keeps asking her if she's a trinket but she doesn't even know what it means anymore.

She struggles when they grip her arms but she doesn't manage to escape and then one of them plunges a syringe in her shoulder and everything fades to black.

She's in a hospital room when she wakes up and someone is half slumped on her bed, almost falling off their chair. It's a man and she can't see his face but the dirty blond hair is familiar. She runs her fingers through the strands wearily. He shoots up immediately, his grey eyes surveying the whole room in fear before falling on her. Her own eyes are burning with tears because it's all coming back now. His face. How could she forget his face? The hatred and the love come back too, swirling inside of her like a fiery flood.

And the words, the words that have been stuck in her throat all this time, she finally manages to swallow them because they're dead. They don't mean anything anymore. Safe isn't with him. Nowhere is safe. And he definitely can't keep her safe. He left her to rot.

"Sweetheart." he breathes out, but she turns her head the other way. She doesn't want to see him. She doesn't want to talk to him. She doesn't want to think about him. "Do you want me to go?" he sounds resigned, like he was expecting that kind of reaction.

She does want him to go away. Forever.

Her hand blindly grips his wrist to keep him where he is.

She doesn't want him to leave her again. Ever.

How she is going to live with this constant paradox, she doesn't know.

She learns to. Day after day, she learns to. She believes him when he tells her he's sorry and that it wasn't supposed to happen that way. She should have had enough time to get back to her apartment but Katniss had taken down the force field and everything went quicker than they had planned. She believes him when he says he looked for her everywhere and tried to get her out. She believes him when he says he regrets not taking her with him. She believes him less when he says everything will be alright. She doesn't believe him at all when she makes him promise to never leave her again.

She starts to talk again. It's quicker to learn how to use her voice again than to give strength back to her body. She still doesn't talk much, to Haymitch's growing despair. He tries to induce her in her usual chatter but she's just not interested. He's told her what happened to the children but when she asks if she can see them, it becomes clear to her that he hasn't told her everything. The war is over but not for her it seems. President Coin is out for her blood which he has carefully forgotten to mention. She's the only escort left alive, apparently. Just like Plutarch is the last Gamemaker. Except, she doesn't have the political weight Plutarch has and it's taking both his influence and Haymitch's to keep her alive. Her hospital room is nothing more than a nicer cell than the one she was in before the rebels rescued her.

Her only visitors are Haymitch and, occasionally, Plutarch, yet, she isn't surprised when President Coin herself shows up one day. Their discussion is short and mostly a blur for Effie. Coin threatens her more or less subtly but she's used to threats by now and she doesn't even flinch when Coin tells her it'd reflect badly on her new presidency to give special favor to an escort because a former victor is enamored with her when all the other ones have been executed. She understands what Coin is not saying: Haymitch won't save her. She accepts to help Katniss get ready for Snow's execution anyway.

She doesn't tell Haymitch about Coin. It's not that she doesn't trust Haymitch but, rather, that she doesn't like the fact that he's deciding for her. He wants to protect her, she gets that, but last time he failed and she just can't get past that yet.

They bring her a dress, leather heels and a wig that looks just like her last one, all golden and curly. She used to find all that beautiful but she can't see the beauty anymore. When she slips everything on, it feels wrong. The clothes are perfect, like they had been designed with her in mind. They suit her even with all the weight she lost but… It feels wrong. She looks in the mirror and Effie Trinket, escort, is looking back. She isn't that woman anymore.

Katniss is as broken as she is, it seems, but Effie makes sure nobody sees the crack under the mask. Or she tries anyway. Acting happy is hard but easier than actually being happy. When she's ordered to take Katniss to a meeting of some sort, just before the execution, she can see Haymitch is not pleased to see her there. She hasn't told him about Coin asking her to take care of Katniss and he clearly wasn't aware. He doesn't say anything though, not in front of so many people, never in front of so many people. It makes her think back to what her captors said to her, if he loves her so much why all the secrets?

Of course, that kind of considerations must wait because the next thing she knows, Katniss once again disrupts the game. Coin and Snow dead, there is a power vacuum to fill. Haymitch and Plutarch both support Paylor, they don't say anything but Effie knows she must have been part of the bargain because she's suddenly allowed to leave.

She goes back to her apartment, half-surprised to see it's still standing. The Capitol, that beautiful city she used to love so much, is mostly destroyed. It disturbs her that she can't see beauty in clothes and wigs anymore when she can so distinctly find some sort of poetic beauty in a collapsed building.

Everything in her flat is turned upside down. Peacekeepers, looters or rebels, she doesn't know and she doesn't particularly care. She starts cleaning because it's something to do. She has cleared out most of the living-room when she feels a presence behind her. Haymitch is leaning against the wall, watching her.

"You should lock the door, sweetheart." he says, before pulling up his sleeves and starting to help her. "We need to talk."

How she hates those words.

"No, we don't." She shrugs. It is rude but she doesn't care about that anymore and she isn't in the mood to put on a show. "You're going back to Twelve." He doesn't need to tell her, it's written on his face.

"They won't let Katniss go otherwise." Haymitch explains, defensively. "I'm her mentor, they will accept to release her in my custody but…"

"She always comes before me, doesn't she?" She chuckles bitterly because she isn't even jealous. How could she? She loves the girl too. "Your precious Mockingjay."

"You're being unfair." he snaps.

"Am I?" she muses, throwing a clutter of broken trinkets in a trash bag.

"Tell me to stay and I'm staying." Haymitch barks.

"I already asked you to stay, you left." She swipes up a handful of broken crystal, not caring about the way the pieces nick her skin. She doesn't fear blood like she used to.

"I told you…"

She doesn't give him time to finish that sentence. She's not interested in hearing more excuses. "I forgave you." She's careful not to look at him. "But you promised me not to leave me behind again, Haymitch, and I won't forgive twice."

"I don't have to leave you behind." He touches her shoulder wearily but she avoids his touch just like she has always done since she has woken up in that hospital room. It's not just him, it's everyone. She doesn't want people touching her or invading her space. She needs her space. "Effie, can't you see it's different?"

"No, I can't." She wishes he would leave now, leave her alone to cry or to scream or to sit silently in a corner and pretend it is all a bad dream. She doesn't know how to move forward. She doesn't know how to forget or accept…

"Come with us." There's a pleading note in his voice. "Come with me."

"To Twelve?" She lets out a round of laughter. She doesn't mean for it to ring out as cruel as it does but it's too late to take it back. He's hurt, she can see it, but she doesn't know how to make it right, how to explain it's not an insult but that the very idea is ridiculous. "There's no place for me in Twelve."

"Yeah…" His eyes don't meet hers. "Well, I'm not sure there's a place for me in the Capitol, princess."

"To be perfectly honest, I am not sure there ever was a place for us anywhere, Haymitch." she says slowly. "If you leave…"

"I think I am." he cuts her off. "Leaving. I can't let the girl down."

"God forbids." She jokes. "Twenty-four sets of tributes, forty-eight tributes in all and it takes Katniss Everdeen to bring you out of your broken shell. Why is that?"

"She gave me hope." Haymitch sighs. "She gave us all hope. Sweetheart, tell me you're not jealous of a seventeen years old girl because…"

"What did I give you?" she asks, very plainly. Because she sure as hell didn't give him hope. "How long have we been dancing that dance, Haymitch? Six or seven years? What did I give you?"

He shrugs. "Love. Comfort. I don't know, it's different." He waves her argument away. "I want you with me, Effie, you know that."

"I'm not leaving the Capitol." she states. She could actually. It's not like she has anything left there. But, somehow, it seems important to make a stand. He promised her not to leave her again and he is doing exactly that less than three weeks later. Asking her to come along isn't staying and she wants him to stay for her. He wouldn't be happy in the Capitol but maybe she wants him to be a little unhappy for her sake for a short while. Maybe that's her way of punishing him. Maybe… "And you're taking Katniss back to Twelve regardless of what I have to say on the issue. You didn't come here to ask my opinion or even discuss the possibility of going away, you came here to inform me that I'm free to say goodbye or come with you." He winces, probably because what she's saying is true. "This is an ultimatum and I won't stand for it, so give me leave to offer my own ultimatum: either you stay here with me and you put me first for once or we're done."

"Don't ask me that." Haymitch begs, running a hand on his face. "They won't release Katniss, they will…"

"You said you would stay if I asked you." she reminds him, but it's no use, she knows. He has already made up his mind. He's a good man, her Haymitch, despite all his flaws. He won't put Katniss' potential freedom in jeopardy because she's throwing a tantrum. She kind of wishes he would, but she knows he won't. All he has to do, really, is saying he would stay and then she would relent. If only he would say yes… She would go with them to Twelve. She just wants to know she comes first, she just wants…

"I'm sorry, sweetheart." His mouth is pinched. She suppresses the urge to kiss the pain away. They haven't kissed since the day he left. A shame too because that caricature of a kiss was lame and probably one of her worst memory of them. She could remember a hundred better kisses than that one. "The girl needs me."

"And I don't?" she retorts, turning her back on him to throw more things into the trash bag. Her hand is bleeding where the crystal pieces have broken her skin but she can't even see the scratches, her sight is blurred by the tears she refuses to shed.

"No, you don't." he sighs. "You think you do, but you don't."

And that is where he's so wrong. She does. She can pretend to be strong and independent all day long and she is mostly, but at the end of the day, she wants arms to wrap around her and a body to lean against. She wants kisses and banter and bickering because the best part about them is the way they always clash against each other.

"I want you to leave now, Haymitch." she requests quietly.

She's prepared for some more pleading, because he's like a child sometimes or a dog who doesn't know when to let go of his toy but she feels the ghost of a hand on her shoulder and a kiss being pressed on the side of her neck. She shivers but she doesn't complain because as much as he is invading her space, she also knows it's probably the last time. "My door is always open for you." he whispers and she can hear the pain there and it's… "Tomorrow, in a month or in a year… I can wait."

"Don't." she warns him. "I'm not coming."

"I don't believe you." He presses another kiss against her skin. "You love me."

He has never said it back. Perhaps that is part of the problem, that inability of his to express his feelings. She knows everything there is to know about his family and his girlfriend. She knows how he thinks love is a weakness.

She hoped to be something more to him than that.

"Love is for children." she bites her lower lip to keep herself from crying. "Goodbye."

He doesn't say goodbye. He doesn't say anything else when he closes the front door behind him. There are no words stuck in her throat this time but it doesn't mean she doesn't feel like she's suffocating. She's literally gasping for air and she collapses on the dusty couch to keep herself from running after him.

It should feel different, she muses. Leaving someone should feel different from being the one left behind. But it doesn't. It's every bit as painful and agonizing.

And, in the end, leaving or being left, you are just as alone.