I do not own 'The Hunger Games Trilogy' or anything related.

Shame doesn't quite cover how I felt. At once I darted from the bed, ignoring the pleas of my family, as I burst the door open and raced down the stairs. We had found the cellar earlier. Opening it, I slammed it shut, and locked it. I found a corner, and huddled against it, covering my face, shaking, rocking back and forth.

Ma must have found the keys, because next thing I knew, as I shook and cried like a little child, I felt her hand touch mine.

"Haymitch," She said softly, "Haymitch, look at me."

Gradually removing my hands from my face, I slowly looked up at her. Her smiling, forgiving face just angered me.

"You didn't mean to hit him. It was an accident-"

"No. Don't you dare. Don't you dare make excuses for me, like you did with him!"

This shocked my mother.

"He – you don't know, Haymitch. He had his demons-"

"Did I not just say don't make excuses for him?" I shot up, "YOU SHUNNED ME ALL THESE YEARS JUST FOR PROTECTING MY BROTHER? AND YOU HAVE THE NERVE TO FORGIVE ME FOR THAT?"

The anger caught me by surprise. I guess I still had it buried deep down, only now to come out. Ma's look became hard.

"If you want to huddle in the corner like a little baby then fine!"

She stormed out of the cellar and slammed the door behind her. I resumed back to my rocking backing and forth, obsessing over what I had done. Soon another person came down. It was Larie.

"Larie! I'm so, so sorry! I didn't mean-"

I felt ashamed, for trying to make excuses for myself. He didn't say anything. Instead he just took and examined the hand that I struck him with. That I struck him with!

"You should probably get some ice on this," He told me, "To stop it from getting more sore."

It was so like him! Thinking about others before himself! I couldn't stop crying. Larie hugged me.

"Shh, it's ok, Haymitch. It's okay."

It was so humiliating, to be comforted by my younger brother when that was my job, but I didn't object, instead hugging him tightly like a stuffed toy only the wealthiest of children had.

It was morning when I suddenly woke up, with him in my arms. I carried him up to his new room, gently untangling him from me as I laid him on his new bed.

I then decided to wash myself. Showering sounded more hygienic than a bath, so that's what I did. Before the games I never had the opportunity to shower (the closest being a shower of rain during summer). As I stepped in and let the water fall on me, I was reminded of all the times in the arena when me and Maysilee collected water.

Suddenly a tribute jumped out from behind a tree and brought his scythe down on me-

Instinctively I rolled on my side, smashing the glass door to the shower. I raised my hand to block the blow with my knife, before realising that I had no knife, and there was no one to attack me. Moments later I heard feet hurrying up the stairs, and soon my ma opened the door to the bathroom.

"MA!" I shouted, grabbing a nearby towel to cover myself, "I'm showering here!"

"I'm sorry! I heard a crash and was worried-"

"Oh, now you care about me?"

I could see my words hurt her. Crying, she started to turn away. Immediately I regretted my words.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" I kept saying, until she decided to stay.

"Shower's no good," I said, "Maybe I'm better off bathing."

"I'll stay with you," Ma said.

"Ma! I'd rather not you see me naked!"

"It's nothing I haven't seen before."

Realising that I had no chance convincing her now to leave me be, I started to prepare a bath.

"I can do that for you!" Ma offered.

"I can do it myself," I retorted.

"Yes, I know you can, but can't you just let me do this for you?"

Thinking that maybe I should just let her do nice things for me, I let her prepare the bath. When she was done, I stepped in.

"How is it?" Ma asked.

"It's okay," I replied.

Actually, it was really good! I became so relaxed that I submerged myself –

Within the water, as agreed, we had our mouths closed so that no poison could enter. We watched as the deer fell into the river around us, becoming still moments later. One almost fell on top of us –

I burst out of the water and scrambled out of the bath.

"Haymitch? Haymitch, what's wrong?" Ma asked me.

Ignoring her, I grabbed a towel, to wipe off the poison from my body.

"Was the bath too cold?"

It took me a moment to calm down, to realise what I was covered in was not poison, but ordinary water, before turning to Ma.

"No, of course it was! I just felt that I had enough water before getting wrinkled!"

Ma continued to stare at me, sceptical.

"Ma, I'm fine. Really."

Even though I wasn't, and I could tell she didn't believe me, she nevertheless accepted my response.

Ma later suggested that perhaps I should go down to the apothecary, and see if they had anything that could help with sleep. I knew what she was implying, but the camera men would still be around and I didn't want the fact that I needed medicine to help with nightmares being broadcasted. My best bet was to wait for them to leave and then I could go down and see what they had to offer. If it was anything like the Hunger Games, if nothing happened for a day, then people would lose interest.

Usually I would be in school right about now, but victors were barred from going. That left me with free time on my hands. I didn't know what to do with it. Victors were supposed to work on their talent, but I had no talent (Unless you included handling a knife, and even that wasn't much of one!). So for the beginning of the day, it was just me and Ma in the house while Larie was at school. I wasn't used to this. Between my outburst last night and the incident this morning in the bathroom, it was a little awkward. Eventually, after doing some housework, Ma turned to me.

"Haymitch, we need to talk."

Talk about what? I wondered. Surely nothing good. Regardless, I complied. She beckoned me to sit down on the couch, and she sat opposite.

"We need to talk. About your father."

Father. The word caught me by surprise. Likely because I didn't consider my old man to be my father. Fathers were supposed to look after their children, to love them, to teach them, like Mel's Pa, to make them miss them when they were gone. Not give them blows.

"You know, you only ever saw him when he was drunk. You never saw him when he was sober."

"He was never sober," I muttered.

"Yes he was. In the morning. He would always express grief for what he had done the night before. He even often broke down in tears, a grown man-"

"Oh, so that makes it alright, does it? Just because he felt bad that excused him for getting drunk that day as well-"

"I'm not asking you to forgive him," Ma said rather patiently to me, "I'm asking you to understand. He had his demons-"

"You keep saying that, as if that excuses him for everything he did!"

"Would you please let me finish?" Ma snapped.

"No!" I stood up again, "What possible demons did he have that it caused him to get drunk every day?"

Ma had a look as if she was considering what to tell me.

"Everyone has demons!" I continued shouting, "Everyone has problems! Yet no one else got drunk and beat up their family-"

"Haymitch, he lost his family."

I didn't understand what she said.

"What do you mean?"

"You father, he - he had a family, before us. And he lost them."

My brain had problems processing this.

"WHAT? I – I had other siblings?"

Ma nodded.

"A boy and a girl."

"….Wh-what happened to them?"

"What is the most well known cause of the death of children?"

My first thoughts fell to hunger. It took me a moment to realise what she meant.

"The Hunger Games."

"Yes."

"Both of them?"

"Yes."

A family losing a child to the Hunger Games was nothing out of the ordinary. But to lose both children? The odds were clearly not in my old man's favour. I sat down.

"What were their names? What were they like? How far did they get in the games-?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Why doesn't it matter-?"

"Because they weren't your family! Just because they were your father's children doesn't make them family! Larie's your family! I'm your family! Your-"

She stopped there. Because she knew there was no way in Hell that I would ever except my old man as my family.

"Can you at least tell me what happened to them in the Hunger Games?"

Again, it seemed to take her a moment to decide.

"Eli's daughter died in the blood bath. His son lasted longer."

"How much longer?"

"Does it matter? Does it matter how much longer some survives in the Hunger Games only to die a gruesome death?"

Probably not.

"So my old man-"

"Don't call him that."

"What else am I supposed to call him? Pa? Father? Papa? Daddy? He doesn't deserved to be called anything else! And I don't see why losing his family excuses him for drinking and beating his new one!"

"Haymitch, just because he had a new family, it didn't mean that he didn't miss his old one!"

"Then he should have never had a new one if he couldn't stop drinking!"

Ma stared at me.

"Are you saying you wish that you were never born? Or Larie?"

The question stunned me. Myself, I'm not so sure. But Larie….?

"I'm just saying, that if he couldn't stop drinking, then he shouldn't have been even thinking of having another family."

For a moment there was silence.

"Why did you ever marry him in the first place?"

"To be honest," Ma shrugged, "I felt sorry for him. When I used to work at the Hob, serving drinks, as I listened to you father, listened to him pouring out his heart and soul, I thought I knew him better than any other man."

"But would you have married him if you knew what was going to happen?"

"You mean if I knew back then that he was going to beat me, no, of course not! But if I could go back now and had the choice of rejecting him, I wouldn't change a thing."

"Why?" I asked exasperated.

"I thought it was obvious."

It wasn't.

"Because if I didn't marry him, I wouldn't have you, or Larie."

I was somewhat touched that Ma was willing to go through all that suffering just for me. I also felt somewhat guilty.

"Regardless of who he was, and what he did, I loved him, and you took him away from me."

"Because he was going to hurt Larie!" I shot up again.

"It doesn't matter," Ma shook her head.

"How can it not matter?"

"Because I loved you all! I didn't want any of you to come to harm! If it had been him who had killed either or both of you in one of his drunken rages I – I don't know what I would have done!"

"…. Alright. I can accept that you continued loving him no matter what he did to you, but how Ma, how could you still love him after what he did to me? And to Larie?"

"Honestly, those were the times that I loved him less, and I made it clear to him every morning. There was one time, where he beat you up, and the next day I told him if he ever did that to you again, I would kill him."

I remember that day. That was the day he almost attacked Larie the first time, when I managed to divert his anger by insulting him.

"You said you would kill him, huh? Yet you punished me for doing so?"

"I didn't mean it, it was an empty threat. I can't imagine myself doing anything like that."

"Even if it meant protecting your children?"

"This may come as a shock to you, Haymitch, but there are some things some people are incapable of doing, no matter the consequence."

At first I was outraged at what she was suggesting. What could stop anyone from protecting those they love? Then I realised what she was talking about. Morality. Ethics. Honour. An awareness of a line that should not be crossed. No line existed for me, cos for me there was nothing more important than protecting those I cared about. But she was also talking about certain things not being in some people's nature.

"Some people are incapable of, but not me."

When I blinked, my vision was watery. Ma looked concerned.

"Why didn't you leave him, to protect us?"

"And do what? Take care of two children all on my own?"

"We got along just fine without him for the last four years!"

"Only because you took tesserae!"

Ma started crying again.

"If there was one thing I do regret, is the moment I told you not to touch me. I wish I could take back that moment. But you scared me, Haymitch, that look on your face when you plunged the knife into his back…. I was mad at you, but I never hated you, and I certainly didn't stop loving you."

She took my hands.

"And I am so sorry, if I made you feel any other way. I wanted to make amends for years, but I didn't know how to approach you. And it didn't help that you became distant too."

"You started it," I muttered.

"Real mature, Haymitch."

Ma shook her head.

"The point is, when your name came out, I swore to myself that if by some miracle you got back home, I would do everything to make things right between us.

So please, can't we start over?"

I stared at her. Patching things up was what I wanted. What we both wanted.

"Just one last question. What were you going to say before they took you away?"

At once Ma knew what I was talking about. It was when we were giving what could have been a goodbye, when she was giving me words of encouragement.

"Haymitch. Haymitch, listen to me!" She told me, "You can win. You are strong. You are fast. You are resourceful, you are smart, and what's more you're a-"

I never got the chance to hear her finish that sentence, as at that time she was taken away by the peacekeepers.

"I was…." Ma stammered, "I was – just going to wish you luck!"

"You know what I mean. You said "You are strong, you are fast, you are resourceful, you are smart, and what's more you're a-". What was that last thing you were going to say?"

I could tell that Ma didn't want to answer.

"Ma, please. If you really want to patch things up between us, then I need to know what you were going to say."

Even though I had a good feeling what she was going to say, I still needed her to say it.

"Fine," She took a breath, "I was going to say you're a – killer."

Even though I knew what she was going to say, even though I needed to hear it, it still hurt. A killer. That is how my Ma saw me, someone who had smiled at me, played with me, hugged me, comforted me, sang to me, told me stories, someone who showed me nothing but love and who I loved in return. A killer. And I guess I was even more now.

"Haymitch. Haymitch, no."

She took my hands again.

"It doesn't matter to me anymore what you did, what you've done. Even though I now know that what you did to your father was not spontaneous, but you premeditated his murder- but it doesn't matter to me, you should from how I love your father that I have no problems loving you – no wait, that came out wrong, oh, I'm doing this all wrong!"

Ma turned away.

"Ma, please."

I took her hand and stopped her from turning around.

"I don't want to start over."

She interpreted the worst from my words. She took her hand back.

"I want to pick up from where we left off."

Now understanding what I wanted, she cried. We embraced. We hugged for a long time before I asked.

"What was he like? Before he was a drunk?"

"I don't know, Haymitch. I only ever really knew him when he started. But what I can tell you, from what he told me down at the hob, was that his children loved him."

Loved him. Because he never shouted or beat them. I hugged her tighter, as I started crying, weeping for the father that I never knew.

"I wish that I had known that old man!"

She hugged me tighter, placing her hand on the back of my head.

"I wished you had known him too."

I miss her touch.

You know what, enough reminiscing, time for a bath!