Chapter 45 :

Two months since Hayden had moved out and Haymitch still wasn't used to the empty chair at lunch. His brother regularly came over for meals – for their mother's sake, Haymitch figured, but it wasn't every day. Hayden was busy enjoying his newfound independence, learning to cook for himself and wash his own laundry – which as their mother pointed out, Haymitch should do too – and do a lot of other things that Haymitch had only dreamt of once or twice before the knowledge that he needed to take care of his family had quelled any fantasy of him living on his own with no one to report to. His brother seemed a little bit happier though.

"Chicken stew." his mother declared, placing the steaming pot on the kitchen table. "Your fav…"

The rest of her words was swallowed by the slight tremor that made everything shake in the house. The earthquake didn't last long, barely a second or two, but they only had time to exchange a glance before the sirens started blazing all around the District. They immediately stood up and headed out, in a reflex from their time in the Seam that a lifetime in the Village would never have erased. Hayden joined them on the path to the wrought gates, looking grim faced.

"They will want able men." he said and Haymitch nodded, quickening his steps to match his brother's. Soon enough, they left their mother behind in the flow of worried people who were hurrying toward the mouth of the mine.

They reached it with the first wave of concerned people. The mine supervisor was busy organizing the rescue teams and had no time to explain what happened but the rumor started running from mouth to ear: a section of the mine had collapsed and miners were trapped. It had happened before, it would happen again.

Hayden and Haymitch had no experience in the mine, the supervisor refused to send them down. Instead, he assigned them to the team that would remain upstairs so they helped settle a security rope to keep the crowd back and then did everything they could to be useful. They carried the miners that spilled out of the elevator and couldn't walk, they made sure medical help was available for the ones who were the worst wounded… Before long, Haymitch was covered in sweat and coal dust and felt sick to the stomach with all the surrounding misery. His hands were covered with blood – although he couldn't seem to tell whose blood it was – and he was trying really hard not to think about the Games and the arena and to the last time his hands had been that crimson.

He spotted his mother with Graesy Sae in a group of women taking care of the rescued miners, giving them water, making sure they were taken care of…

The flow of miners was endless. The elevator vomited them again and again until night fell and the stream started to trickle down. The crowd behind the rope had thinned down, people had found their loved ones and taken them home but those who remained… There was a girl with dark hair and grey eyes clutching the security rope in one hand and her sister's hand with the other. She couldn't be much more than eleven or twelve but her face struck him. On her left her mother was crying, on her right the sister was in tears but so strongly afraid she wasn't making any sound at all and the girl… The girl was stone faced, as if she knew what would eventually happen and was already transitioning to the one who would be in charge from now on. He was familiar with the process, he had gone through it.

That one was a survivor, he thought.

Then he was distracted by a cry on his left. "Gale!"

The voice was familiar and the boy who made a dash for the elevator ran right past him so it wasn't much of a hassle to grab him before he could go any further. The teenager – barely thirteen, he guessed – tried to wriggle free but Haymitch's lock on his torso was secure and he dragged him back to his mother kicking and screaming. It had been years since he had last seen Hazelle and she looked surprised when he appeared in front of her, her son in his grip.

"Haymitch." she said blankly.

They had been in the same class. They had been friends, good friends. She had tagged along more than once when he and Mabel had escaped the fence to visit the woods. He hadn't kept in touch with anyone after his Games.

Her Seam grey eyes darted to the boy Haymitch pushed back on the other side of the rope and her hand latched on the kid's shoulder. "Don't run off like that, I need you to…" The rest of her sentence trailed off in a whine of pain as she clutched her stomach. Pregnant stomach, Haymitch noticed, even though pregnant women in Twelve were never big. He reached out to steady her instinctively, glancing at the two other boys clutching her frayed coat with terrified eyes. "I'm fine. I'm fine." she hissed through clenched teeth.

"Mom, you're not fine." the teenager argued, pushing away Haymitch's hands to steady his mother himself. "Let me go and find Dad and…"

Hazelle's water broke and splotched at their feet. Haymitch watched his shoes stupidly, wondering how he could still find that more disgusting that the blood covering his hands.

"Oh, fuck." she said.

"Mommy, you said a bad word." One of the youngest boys whispered, eyes wide and utterly shocked.

"Okay, Okay… We need to get you home." Haymitch decided, glancing at the teenager. "You, go get the midwife."

The boy stared at him with open mistrust but then ran away.

"So, what, you finally decided to get down from your high horse to visit your old friends and you're already trying to be the boss of me?" Hazelle retorted. "That's just like you, Haymitch. You always have to be the one in charge. You can't just…" Another contraction hit and she clutched at her stomach again, bent in two. "I'm not going anywhere until my husband is here." she panted. "I need to know."

"Who's your husband?" he asked, tossing a glance over his shoulder. He caught his brother's eye and gestured him over.

"Hazelle!" Hayden exclaimed in surprise once he was close enough to see the woman's face in the dark. "It's been years."

"Yeah, nice to see you." she replied dismissively. "You will excuse me, I'm in a bit of a hurry, so could someone find my husband?"

"Look, don't be stupid." Haymitch snapped. "What you're gonna do? Give birth out here in front of everyone?"

It took five more minutes and another rant on her part before she consented to go home as long as Hayden would stay and warn her as soon as there would be news of her husband. The kids were young and badly afraid but he managed to get their name out of them, Vick and Rory, the oldest one was Gale, and with their help, they reached Hazelle's house without any other difficulties than his hand being crushed to death each time a contraction bent her in two.

He had barely helped her settle down on her bed when Gale came back, all white face, followed at a more measured pace by Graesy Sae and Haymitch's own mother.

"The midwife's son is dead." Sae said grimly. "She won't come. Everdeen's wife is waiting for news and the doctor has his hands full for now."

"My husband." Hazelle begged. Her nails were digging painfully into the flesh of Haymitch's wrist and he wished her husband would hurry to take that elevator so he could escape with all his limbs.

"I'm sorry, dear, no news yet." Iris replied, sitting next to her on the bed. "Now, let's see how far you are, yes?"

Haymitch suddenly understood they were planning on helping her deliver the baby and he couldn't jump away from the bed fast enough.

"You sure you can do that?" he asked, watching Sae and his mother dubiously.

"We've all been there, boy." Sae scoffed, wiping sweat from Hazelle's brow. "Why? You want a try?"

"I need Robb." Hazelle repeated again. "Please, please, I need Robb. The kids… Someone needs to watch the kids…"

"Haymitch will do that very well." his mother said as if it was decided.

And it was.

Soon enough, he was pushed out of the bedroom and into the main room where the kids were all sitting around the table.

It occurred to him that he had no idea how to take care of small children. Vick, the youngest, was barely five. What did you do with a five years old? Rory was eight and stared at Haymitch as if he held the truth of the universe. And Gale… Gale had his face buried in his hands.

"Where's Mommy?" Vick asked in a frightened voice.

"She's… Well…" Haymitch stammered. "You're getting a new little brother or sister."

"And Daddy?" Rory asked. "Where's Daddy? He was here when Vick was born."

Hazelle let out a sharp cry from the other room which made the youngest kids look at the door in horror and Haymitch decided distraction was in order. He clasped his hands. "Who wants to hear stories about when your Mommy was young and wild?"

Gale took his hands away long enough to stare at him in disbelief.

"It's time for bed." the teenager said.

Haymitch glanced at the clock next to the fireplace and he supposed that, indeed, it was long past bedtime for small kids but he could see that wouldn't work.

"But I'm hungry." Vick argued with a frown. "We didn't have dinner."

It was the moment Hayden chose to appear. He was as dirty as Haymitch felt, covered in coal dust and blood. His face, though, told Haymitch everything he needed to know.

"Dad?" Gale asked in a whisper.

Vick and Rory looked at Hayden with such expectant eyes… As if they were waiting for him to step aside so their father could come in and that just broke Haymitch's heart. If they told them, the boys would want their mother and she had more urgent problems right now. It needed to wait for a little while.

Gale, though, was another problem entirely. From Hayden's hesitant stance, he had understood. The boy stood up and kicked the chair he had been sitting on.

"Hey." Haymitch said, fishing for a good way to handle this. "We have food at home. Why don't you go with Hayden and bring back some. You can… talk on the way."

For a second, he thought Gale would protest but then his eyes fell on his little brothers and he nodded slowly.

"You will keep an eye on them?" the boy asked.

"Yeah, sure." Haymitch promised. "We will play a game or something… You've got a game, boys?"

Hayden and Gale were gone much, much longer than a walk up and back to their house warranted. It was long enough, in any case, that the boys taught Haymitch everything he needed to know about that weird card game involving going fishing and hitting the deck of cards when you had four cards of the same color… He wasn't sure he understood everything and he was very tempted to introduce them to poker if only because it would have distracted him from the now regular screams from Hazelle in the next room.

When they finally come back, Gale's eyes were red and Hayden looked exhausted. The boys didn't notice, they threw themselves on the cold stew and ate up at least two full plates each. After that, they dropped like flies and their brother carried them both to bed.

"There are still men trapped down there." Hayden told him once they were alone. "I'm going to go back and see if I can help."

"Be careful." he nodded.

Hayden clasped his shoulder and then headed out and, for the first time, Haymitch saw the man instead of the boy.

Gale wandered back in the main room after a while and they waited in a silence only disrupted by Hazelle's shouts. The boy was staring into the fire, lost in his thoughts and Haymitch didn't feel it was his place to disturb him. It was nearing dawn when a different cry rang out through the house, a baby's wailing. Gale jumped to his feet and it wasn't long before Sae appeared on the threshold with a toothless smile. "You got a brand new little sister."

A relieved grin played on the boy's lips but disappeared soon enough. "How's Mom?"

"She will be fine." Iris said, urging the boy in before walking closer to her own son. "She wants to know if her husband…" Haymitch shook his head and his mother's mouth pinched in sorrow. "I see. Do you want to tell her or…"

"No, you do it." Haymitch was quick to say.

"A friend in time of needs…" Iris started to lecture but Haymitch shook his head again.

"I haven't seen her in years. I don't think we're much friends anymore." he mumbled. "I'm going back to the mine, see if I can help there."

He was a coward, he mused, once he was back outside, watching the break of dawn in the horizon. The night had been a long one. He could see blankets had been passed around for people still waiting for news behind the security rope. He also could see no more miners were being hauled up from the belly of the mine. The girl with dark hair and her family were still there though, the mine captain was talking to them. The mother broke down into sobs and fell to her knees in her grief, the blond little girl started wailing and Haymitch watched, with an almost morbid fascination, as the dark haired girl quickly forced her mother up and started dragging her family back in the direction of the Seam. Not a single tear. She was gutsy that one.

Hayden was nearby, talking to another family: a woman with two boys. At some point, she started crying and Hayden immediately put a hand on her shoulder, looking calm but so very sorry.

Haymitch found Undersee in the chaos and asked what he could do, straight-out refusing to announce any death to anyone. He wasn't cut out for that.

"Well… If you're up to it, they will need help in the cemetery…" Undersee suggested grimly.

The cemetery wasn't a place he entered willingly. He gave a wide berth to Mabel's headstone and didn't look at the corner reserved for fallen tributes to join the numerous men already digging. Someone passed him a shovel and then he attacked the cold dried earth. It was an ungrateful job, the soil was icy in place and his back started hurting before long but he kept at it, only pausing long enough to drink from the bottle of water being passed around, wishing it was whiskey instead. He dug and dug and dug and carefully didn't think about how an awful death it was to be swallowed up by dirt.

People started trickling in the cemetery by noon. Some came to help dig more graves: miners who had been lucky enough to escape unharmed, others were simply people who wanted to help. He even spotted the baker and some of his boys – fortunately his witch of a spouse was nowhere to be seen though. Most people came for funerals. It never took long to organize in Twelve, a few planks hastily nailed together were used as coffin and when the family couldn't afford that, a simple shroud made of a white sheet.

Haymitch lost count of the number of funerals he saw from afar that day while he was killing his back digging the dry earth. Still, they kept coming and coming to the point he wondered how the District would manage with so many miners gone.

It was late afternoon by the time he went home but he felt as if years had passed. Hayden was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich in silence, still covered in dust. Haymitch didn't want to know what he looked like after a whole day spent digging graves. He let his mother usher him to the sink and he washed his hands absent-mindedly while she fixed him something to eat. The dirt remained lodged under his fingernails but he couldn't be bothered to get it out, Effie would have had a fit, he thought.

He ate and showered on autopilot, barely registering what his mother told him about Hazelle – she was doing as fine as could be expected – and stumbled to his bed. He was asleep before his head even touched the pillow.

He woke up hours later, out of breath, completely panicked and looking for a knife that wasn't there. The dreams were hazy in his memory but he knew they had been gory and violent. It was the middle of the night and the house was silent so he figured either he hadn't cried out in his nightmare or his mother had slept through it. He tried to lie back down but his mind kept wandering to all those people standing behind that rope near the mine, to the faces waiting for news about their spouses and loved ones, to the graves and Hazelle and the kids…

When he crept down the stairs in the dark, careful to be silent, he didn't know what he was doing. A glass of water or maybe a book, that was how he would have explained it to his mother. If it had been his brother then he would probably have admitted he was craving a drink with the kind of thirst that made him afraid, sometimes, that he was becoming a drunkard after all – because where was the line? He didn't know why he rummaged around drawers until he found out what he was looking for and walked to the phone or even why he picked it up.

The phone rang and rang for so long he was sure it was a lost cause but then there was a click and it stopped ringing.

"Hello?" a confused voice answered.

And for the first time in months, Haymitch finally relaxed.

"Hello, sweetheart."


Ahah! I was impatient for this chapter! Did you spot Katniss? And Hazeeeeelle is here! I'm assuming in canon Haymitch never went to help at the mine and thus never reconnected with various friends but here we have Hayden dragging him to help so... Yep, Hazelle is here. Next week you get the phone call ;)

Also, we're back to Friday updates next week. =)

What did you think of this one?