XI. CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT
Whoever of your world deprives himself,
Who games, and dissipates his property,
And weepeth there, where he should jocund be.
Sapphira Starlett. 43.
Victor of The 25th Hunger Games.
District One Victors' Village. 21:01
The week before the Reapings was always the hardest for Sapphira. Even in the years where she wasn't mentoring, Crista was required to go back to District Four to sit on the stage for the duration of the Ceremony. She didn't have family in Four (or at all), but Crista loved the beaches and the waves and the water and the Reapings in Four tended to be less formal than those at One.
"Are you sure we should take her?" Sapphira was beginning to have doubts about having Cressida accompany her and Crista to the Capitol for the 51st Hunger Games, "I'm sure my father would be willing to watch her."
Usually Cressida stayed with Sapphira's father while her mothers were in the Capitol, and while he wasn't the best grandfather in Panem which wasn't surprising since he was far from the best father, Cressida admitted to enjoying her time watching all the "pretty people" on TV during the Pre-Games, and then hiding in what used to be Sapphira's bedroom and watching as many movies as her little heart could hold until Sapphira and Crista returned to pick her up once the Games were through.
"She doesn't like it there," Crista rubbed her wife's back as the family sat in the theatre room to watch a movie on their last "normal night" of the year, "She says he's boring."
Sapphira wasn't too surprised by that confession. It wasn't anything particularly out of the ordinary to hear that her father basically ignored Cressida and she spent all her time upstairs watching movies as a result, the parallels to her own childhood obvious, "And he is; I just don't want her to get traumatized by the Games."
Cressida had been begging for her mothers to take her to the Capitol ever since she learned what it was. All the costumes, the glamour, the sheer luxe that everybody embodied themselves in. She really took after her mother Sapphira in that sense, that same lust for stardom.
"She's tougher then you think," Crista rubbed Sapphira's back, her head tucked under her armpit, "And I doubt she'll even comprehend everything."
Sapphira doubted it but she didn't want to instigate that night. She just wanted to enjoy the peace of her daughter and her beloved, already yearning for a few weeks away when they could return to the same normalcy, "You like the movie, Cress?"
She'd been quiet for a while now, perhaps because she was enamored in the movie they were watching, The Terrible Treks of Faust Fornam 2 starring Roscius Mills. They watched the first film the previous night, Cressida's first action movie. She was strangely hooked on it, enough so that Sapphira began more certain that her daughter wouldn't mind seeing the Games in person. They couldn't be that much worse than the movie since it was shockingly gory for a movie.
"He looks so good…" Sapphira muttered as she saw the young star flaunt his sporty figure across the screen, his hips swaying as he paraded through the forest.
"Yeah?" Crista smiled, looking at Cressida's awestruck face on the floor, "You like the movie, right?"
Suddenly it got a bit more gory, the films titular character getting clawed at by a wolf, his face bleeding onto the dirt floors, "Not as much anymore. Mommy's movie?"
Sapphira was guilty in trying to hook her daughter on anything but her old movies since she really didn't need to see the girl she once was so certain she was. The girl she was so utterly disgusted by, the girl she couldn't ever recognize.
It's crazy to think I ever looked like that… and I fucking wasted it all.
She cringed as she saw her younger self once again grace the screen, Cressida screaming in glee at the sight of her mother, even if Sapphira couldn't tell whether or not she understood the dense subject matter of the film. She herself wasn't sure she understood. The movie was about cheating in relationships and the toxicities it involved, and such toxicities weren't known to Sapphira Starlett anymore. Their relationship was the type of euphoria that she didn't know she craved until it happened. She didn't realize how badly she needed somebody to spend the rest of her life with, especially after the trauma of the Games.
After the Games she never thought she'd be able to sleep besides someone, much less fuck them, start a family with them, the images of Summer fresh in her mind for the longest time. She could have died so easily that day, and it was just as easy for somebody to kill her the same way, in her most vulnerable state. Anaïs came and left, frustrated by the lack of sex, and Sapphira couldn't really blame her, but the gentle disposition and patience of Crista Cray somehow slipped though the tiniest cracks in her rock hard exterior.
And Sapphira let her.
She let Crista speak to her, be subjected to her useless ranting, give her soft kisses as they watched the dog run. Sapphira let Crista love her, as hard as it was for the girl. She had never felt so cared for, so valued, as she felt when she was with Crista. She felt like she was the star she once knew herself to be. The star on the screen that she wished she still saw when she looked in the mirror.
"Crista," Sapphira needed the one thing that made her feel just as alive as she did when she was in her twenties, "You still love me right, even thought I'm not her anymore," she gestured at her own on the screen. She could hardly recognize herself.
"You're her," Crista kissed her on the cheek, "Always have been and always will be."
Sapphira glanced down at Cressida, struck by the awe in her eyes as she stared at the movie, "Do you like the movie Cress?"
"You're my favorite part," The girl smiled
"Mine too," Crista pulled her wife closer as she fell asleep to the symphonies of her youth and her sense of belonging.
Haymitch Abernathy. 17.
Victor of The 50th Hunger Games.
District Twelve Victors' Village. 14:30
There would never be enough time in the world for Haymitch to fully get over the loss of his mother. It was as if everywhere he went, he was followed by the fading memories of her soft and comforting presence as he pretend she was still with him when he tried to go to sleep but couldn't because of the nightmares, not only from the Games but from the terrible thing that happened to her.
What did I do wrong? He would never understand why his actions in the arena were so awful. I wanted to win, to get out. And I did what I had to do for that to happen. They want a ruthless Victor right? Somebody experimental?
Maybe the reason he would never understand was because there simply wasn't anything for him to understand. What Haymitch did wasn't nearly as horrible as the heinous attacks on his mother that followed. The forcefield incident wasn't as bad as the many sleepless nights he spent as memories of his mother's dead body rolled through his mind.
"You know that you're fine, right?" His boyfriend Noel was always trying to comfort him on the dark days where he'd be plagued by thoughts of everything that would happen and everything that was sure to come, "They're the bad guys, not you."
Even though the two of them had been together since before the Games (which made Haymitch feel sort of nice since he knew he wasn't being taken advantage of), Noel's words no longer worked on him. They had before, his poems and soft singing lulling Haymitch to sleep night after night, making his previous state of poverty not all that bad. Noel was like a guy out of the movies, almost too good to be true, but the fact he was true was perhaps the best thing, "I just can't say I understand why she's gone."
"You're not supposed to," Noel grabbed his hand harder than before as the two of them walked to Haymitch's house in Victor's Village. Noel was from his old neighborhood in the Seam, and Haymitch was always kind of embarrassed when he took him to his new house, even if he supposedly "earned it."
What good is this nice house if mom isn't in the kitchen cooking dinner? How am I supposed to consider this place a home even?
"Well then I won't," Haymitch forced a smile. He hated that the majority of his conversations with Noel had become centered on his mother yet it was all that he could think about, he just wished he could love his boyfriend unapologetically and not be forced to think about the fact his mother wouldn't be there to walk him down the aisle when they eventually got married.
"So what do you want to talk about then," Noel sat him down on a bench a couple blocks away from his house. As he did instinctually, Haymitch tucked his head under the taller boy's arms, talking a deep breath to remind himself that he was safe.
I miss when Noel holding me was my safe space. I miss when I was actually able to consider any space safe.
"Anything but her," He felt Noel's warmth embody his soul as he kissed Haymitch's forehead, his fingers picking through the loose strands of his hair, "Can I talk about you and how much I appreciate you?"
"Me?" Noel let out a confused laugh, "Hay, you're the real catch here. You kept my broke ass around even after you won the Hunger Games. I don't know any guy that would do that."
"Well I don't know any guy who would tolerate his boyfriend only talking about his dead mom," Haymitch untangled himself from Noel's arms so he could sit on his lap and stare into his hypnotic brown eyes. He didn't care that he was in public, and that people sure as hell would recognize him, I just need the feeling he used to bring me to come back.
"If you've got to talk about it then–" Haymitch cut him off with a kiss, pressing his head against the back of the bench, "Okay then!"
Noel kissed back with more passionate than Haymitch's initial action, prompting him to wrap his arms around his neck and slip his legs through the park bench and around his waist. Noel guided his hands down Haymitch's back, eventually reaching the spot just above his ass, "I just remembered that we're in public!"
"Right," Haymitch mumbled unhooking himself from Noel and sitting next to him on the bench as if his tongue wasn't in his throat less than a minute ago, "I think we should hurry up our walk back to my house."
"You want to?" He knew what Noel was implying right away.
"Fuck yeah I do," The feeling Haymitch had when they had first gotten together was finally returning.
He practically sprinted through the streets of the neighborhood, grabbing Noel's hand and ignoring the confused stares of the passerby. Haymitch was simply so excited to spend even more time with his darling, provided that the remainder of his family wasn't home.
It wasn't that his father Elias and his sisters Beth and Melody minded the fact he was bisexual, in fact they were quite supportive of his relationship, Haymitch just didn't need them to see him run up to his room in a hurry, practically unable to take his hands off Noel.
But they wouldn't be home! The girls were at school and his father usually did grocery shopping around this time of the week, and by the time he and Noel were done with whatever they were excited to get up to, they'd have enough time to shower off and pretend that they were just watching a movie. Even if Haymitch was a Victor, his father still had rules which included leaving the door to his bedroom wide open whenever Noel was over. It was fine though; it made Haymitch feel normal.
"I'm so excited," Haymitch stood on the tip of his toes and pressed his lips against Noel's ear, excited to whisper even more sweet nothings.
He turned the key to the big wooden door of the house and immediately realized that something was wrong. There was smashed glass on the ground and when he looked to the left he saw the only thing that he could consider worse than his mother's body.
Haymitch closed his eyes and turned to hug Noel. He couldn't bear the sight of his father and sisters' cold, dead bodies on the ground.
Hey so I know that canon gave Haymitch a girlfriend when he was young but I simply do what I want so he is a bisexual icon now. I don't make the rules I just enforce them. Thanks for reading this disaster of an interlude though!