Prompt : :So I just have this idea and I hope you can write. Can you do one where Haymitch is having a nightmare and Effie are trying to wake up him, but she doesn't know about the knife and when he wake up he hurt her or something.

And

Prompt : There are so many oneshots where haymitch accidently hurts effie with hos knife but i am in the mood for angst so could you do one where he really kills her. And make it with a confession of feelings during effies last minutes?

Edge of a Knife

Fire everywhere. Screams. Maysilee, his girl, his brother and his mother… Gone, trapped in the fire. He can't get close enough to help. He can only watch as they burn. They're ashes by the time he gets close enough. Tributes emerge from the wreckage. All of them. Bloodied faces, snarling angrily at him, trying to get their revenge, trying to…

A hand on his arm and he lunged himself at his attacker instinctively, his knife swinging left and right, slashing through skin and flesh. He felt the blood on his hands, felt the spatters on his face before he even opened his eyes. It was instinctive really, born from that primitive part of him that wanted to stay alive at all costs, even now, even after everything. The knife fell from his shaking hand as he took in the scene in front of him.

"No!" he gasped, grabbing Effie before she could fall, drawing her against his chest as if it could help. She was wearing a pink nightgown or at least it had been pink before it got smeared in dark red. Her wavy blond hair was framing her face like a halo and he didn't like the foreshadowing of that thought. Her throat was slit open and she was gushing blood. "No. No, no, no, no…" He laid her down on the bed, pressed his hand to the wound all the while knowing it was too late. He had stabbed at the perfect angle to bring death, she was losing too much blood. "You know not to wake me like this! You know!" he yelled. Her eyes were huge and terrified, she was gasping for air that couldn't pass her open throat, her fingers wrapped around his wrist, leaving bloody traces on his already red-tainted skin.

She didn't know about the knife. She didn't know about the knife. She didn't know about the knife.

But of course she did. He could remember another night just like this one when he had almost killed her by accident. Except the memory was fuzzy and he couldn't access it. There was room for nothing in his mind but the present and her blood on his hands.

"Don't die." he begged even if it was stupid. He pressed with more strength on the wound but already her eyes were fluttering close as the stream of blood was becoming thinner. "Sweetheart, please." He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her chin… "Please, don't die. Please. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He kissed her lips softly like he had done a thousand times before. Her gloss used to be strawberry flavored but all he could taste now was the dark metallic tinge of blood. "Don't leave me." he pleaded, kissing her again. "I need you, don't leave me." He needed her to keep him sane, to keep him alive… He needed her sweet kisses in the mornings and the gentle brush of her fingers as she passed by him on the couch. He needed her irritating lectures on geese and her incessant complaints about the racket they made. But there weren't geese, here…

Geese belonged to another lifetime entirely. Geese would never happen because she was dying, as good as dead already and he had killed her. He had betrayed her trust again, he had let her down and she was dying… Not at the hands of the Capitol, not at the hands of the rebels but at his own like he had always known she would. He destroyed everything. Everyone who loved him ended up dead and she was no exception.

The gurgling noise came to a stop. The fingers coiled around his wrist fell down limply on the bed. Her chest was still. She was no more.

"No!" he roared, pumping on her chest and breathing into her mouth to try and bring her back. Useless, of course. "Come back. Come back. I love you, you stupid woman. Come back!" But she didn't and after a while he gave up on mouth to mouth. He rested his forehead on her stomach and fisted her pink nightgown desperately. "Come back."

He didn't know how many times he repeated that. Come back. Come back. Come back. She never did but, at some point, it was almost like she was saying the words with him. He could hear her voice as clearly as his own. It was a consistent whisper… A whisper that grew louder and louder until everything around him started to fade quickly and he ended up gasping for air, sitting in a bed that wasn't covered with blood, clenching bony shoulders that weren't dead with hands that weren't red from the murder he had just committed.

"It was a nightmare." Effie was quick to tell him, gripping his forearms. "You're safe, Haymitch."

As his heart started to slow down to a more normal rhythm, his eyes darted from one corner of the room to another. They were in their bedroom in Twelve, not in the penthouse, not in the Capitol. In the dark, he could see the pink curtains and the matching carpet at the foot of the bed, the shape of her dressing table, the wardrobe and the outline of Peeta's paintings on the walls… And she was there too, of course, sitting cross-legged in front of him, patiently waiting for him to fully wake up. She was intimately acquainted with his nightmares just like he was to hers. They had become messed-up people somewhere along the line.

He could see the subtle differences between this Effie and the Effie of his nightmare. The Effie in front of him looked harder, older. There were some lines at the corners of her eyes that she complained about everyday but that he secretly loved because lines meant they were getting old and getting old meant they were still alive. Her hair was tied up in a careless braid that fell on her shoulder, it wasn't as silky and shiny as it used to be either. He could glimpse the smallest of her scars on her shoulder and he knew that if he lifted up the silk top she was wearing, he would see all the others on her creamy skin. This Effie was battered, she wasn't the doll of his nightmare, she wasn't an escort anymore. But he had loved the escort too in his own way and that didn't help make the whole thing okay.

He pulled her in a bone-crushing hug that made her yelp in surprise. "I'm sorry." he whispered in her ear, needing to get the words out again. How many times did he apologize for what had happened to her? It was his fault. It was his guilt. And no matter how many times she'd promised she had forgiven him, he could never forgive himself.

Her embrace was gentle but firm, her hands guided him around, moving him until they were lying back down, his head on her chest, ear pressed to her heart, and arms wrapped possessively around her middle section.

"Tell me." she requested, her fingers brushing his hair out of his eyes.

He swallowed down the urge for a drink. He was trying to stop. He would probably fail like he did every other time but he tried.

"I killed you." He closed his eyes and breathed her scent in. "You were dead in my arms."

"Well, your biggest wish was granted then." she teased. She ran a hand up and down his arm soothingly but it did little to stop his shaking.

"Don't joke about that." he growled, tightening his hold on her. "Where's the knife?" He needed to be sure. He needed to be…

"In your bedside table drawer." she said. "Like every night. You won't hurt me. I'm safe. You're safe. We will be just fine, I swear."

He wanted to tell her she had no business swearing that kind of things. She couldn't know. None of them could. The best they could do was hoping.

"You're never leaving me behind, sweetheart." he told her. "Promise."

"I promise." she offered easily. "Do you think you can go back to sleep? It can't be that long before dawn… We could get up, if you'd rather. I could make pancakes and you could mock me while I burn them…"

He pressed a kiss on her skin, directly above her heart. "You should sleep. You're tired."

"I don't want to leave you alone." She slid down the bed a bit so she could reverse their position more easily. She snuggled against him, burrowing against his side and placing her head on his shoulder like she usually did when they went to bed. They stayed silent for a few minutes, content to simply rest in each other's arms. It was something they never took for granted. Not after the rebellion and everything else…

"Effie…" he hesitated, after a while, unable to shake the image of her dead body in his bed out of his head. "I…" He could never go further than that despite how much he wanted to sometimes. He could never tell her how much she meant to him. The words didn't want to come out.

"I know." she hummed like she did every time. She had never pressured him for an I love you or something equally sentimental. He showed her how much he loved her with gestures but the words… The words he could never say. The last people he had confessed those words to had all died because of them. "Me too."

"Good." he sighed, dropping a quick kiss on her forehead. "Good…"

And it was.