Hayffie prompt: similarly to the scene with Gale, Katniss, Haymitch and Peeta on the square thing in district 12, Haymitch has to run out to save Effie instead

All The Same

"It's been two days." Haymitch growled as he and Plutarch quickly walked along the corridors of District 13. Too many corridors, he couldn't help but think, too many hidden layers to this brand new hell. Each time he thought they couldn't go lower, there was a staircase or an elevator, more soldiers to show their clearance cards to, more grim faces.

"I didn't know, Haymitch." Plutarch swore for what must have been the tenth time since he had barged into his room earlier.

They had been in Thirteen for two days and Haymitch knew already he had only traded a devil for another. Better the devil you know… That stupid saying was stuck into his head. He knew how to play Snow's games, Coin's were another thing entirely.

"If anything happened to her…" Haymitch couldn't help the stab of sheer panic. He had bargained for Effie's safe passage in Thirteen but had been told upon his arrival that the retrieving mission had failed. And now, Plutarch had just been made aware that there had been a "mistake" and that she was down there, somewhere, being interrogated.

Haymitch didn't believe for one second that it had been a mistake.

If it had been, they could have ordered her to be released, they wouldn't need Haymitch to go get her. This wasn't a mistake, this was a show of power and he wasn't fooled.

The corridors were long and endless, they got to another floor, they were so deep in the earth that his ears were starting to play tricks on him. There was no one chatting in the corridors in there, only closed doors all around with small windows in the middle. From outside it looked like cells. Haymitch peeked in one of the room and railed back.

"Torture chambers." he hissed. "They're torturing people." How Capitol…

And Effie was down there… He walked quicker.

"Of course, they're torturing people, Haymitch." Plutarch said but his nose was wrinkled in obvious distaste. "We're at war. What did you think?"

What did he think?, he mused, a perfectly valid question. The ear-piercing scream prevented him from answering and sent him running all at once. The voice was too familiar. Plutarch fell behind soon enough, too fat and too out-of-shape to follow.

It wasn't hard to find the right room, not with all the screams and the begging. He barged in and took in the situation at once. The creamy skin of Effie's back exposed, the whip ready to lash down… He didn't even think before throwing himself between the two, shielding her with his own body, pressing his chest to her back.

He grunted when the leather strap bit into his flesh but the pain was worth it, better in any case than hearing her scream again. He briefly rested his forehead on her shoulder to get the burning throb under control. She was crying.

There was confused shouting behind him and then Plutarch's angry voice raging about how it was unacceptable. Haymitch let him do the talking, he was too afraid he would kill the soldier who had only been obeying orders.

He stepped back to inspect the damages. Only a single red line marred her back, not even that deep. Perfectly timed, he couldn't help but think. No, it definitely hadn't been a mistake.

"You're safe." he lied, placing a hand on her shoulder in hope she would stop shaking.

"Haymitch?" she stammered between two sobs.

"It's over, sweetheart. I'm taking you out of here." he whispered before turning around to the soldier. "Keys."

The rebels stopped studying the release papers Plutarch was showing him and threw Haymitch the keys without any sort of discussion. Clever man, Haymitch thought, but a shame all the same. He would have very much enjoyed a fight. His own arm was aching when he fumbled with her restrains and he was accustomed to pain so he wasn't surprised when she almost collapsed against him. She was more terrified than hurt, he gathered, but for someone who had never had any reason to be scared for her life, it must have been just as bad.

"Can you walk?" he asked. "Did they do anything else?"

He doubted it. They had probably be rough with her and he supposed he would hear about their rudeness before long but she looked otherwise alright. It wasn't in Coin's interest to harm her in a permanent fashion, after all. All for show, he thought with disgust.

"I… I don't understand." she stuttered. Her dress was torn at the back and she was holding the front safely in place. Her wig was gone, her hair was still in the bun she always wore underneath them but some strands had gotten loose. Her make-up was dry, cracked in some places and smudged in others. He made a mental note to keep her away from any potential mirror. "Did they kidnap you too? The children…"

"You haven't explained anything to her?" Plutarch sounded just as angry as Haymitch was.

"Explanations can wait." Haymitch snapped. She flinched. "Effie, are you hurt anywhere else?"

He was almost relieved to see irritation flash in her eyes. "Isn't this enough?" She looked at Plutarch, then at the soldier and finally at Haymitch, she noticed the identical uniforms. He watched as she put two and two together and wasn't actually surprised when she pulled away from him. "Explain." she ordered, stepping back until she stood against the wall. She gasped when her wound made contact with concrete but she remained where she was, at a safe distance from everyone in the room.

"It's a long story and you need medical attention." Haymitch replied, outstretching a hand. "I will explain on the way."

"I want to go home." Tears welled up in her eyes. "You have no right to keep me here. Take me home."

"Miss Trinket, you need to understand…" Plutarch started but she didn't listen.

"Take me home, Haymitch." she shrieked.

He knew that tone and he knew the signs. She was about to launch into an hysteric fit of epic proportions – the kind that generally ended with him kissing her silent or him dragging her to the shower to pour freezing water on her head, depending on his mood. There was no way he would kiss her in front of people and they were short on freezing water in there. Besides, his back was aching something fierce and she wasn't the only one who probably needed to see a doctor. He had no time for her to cause a scene.

"I can't." He shrugged and regretted it at once when the wound ached. "Katniss needs you." And they would probably kill her on sight if she ever put a foot back in the Capitol but he didn't think mentioning that now was a good idea.

"Katniss?" she repeated, her eyes darting all around the room. "Where is she? Where are we?"

Plutarch glared at the soldier who lifted his hands in a helpless gesture.

"We're in District Thirteen, Miss Trinket." the Gamemaker said. "We are with the rebels. Well… We are the rebels."

Her brain was working fast through the pain and the confusion, he could tell. "Did you know about this or did they grab you like they took me?" The question was directed at Haymitch who winced. It was all the answer she needed. "What about the children?"

"They didn't know." he promised. "We… We only managed to save Katniss, sweetheart. Peeta is in the Capitol."

If he had thought she couldn't get angrier, he had been wrong. Fury flashed on her face but was soon hidden behind the polite mask of the escort. He doubted Plutarch or the soldier saw anything.

"What do you want from me?" she asked flatly. "I don't possess the information you are after. I am not in President Snow's confidences." She glanced at Haymitch. "You should know better."

Plutarch looked at him but Haymitch remained silent.

"We didn't expect information from you, Miss Trinket." the Gamemaker offered awkwardly. "There was a miscommunication somewhere. All of this is a mistake. We wanted you to join us."

"Mistake, my ass." Haymitch grumbled.

"Language." she snapped but there was no heat in it, she was glaring at Plutarch. "So, let me be sure I understood right : I have been brutalized, I have been mocked, I have been threatened, my wig and my jewelry have been torn away from me, my dress has been damaged, I have been shackled to a torture post and whipped, all for a… mistake?" Her voice didn't rise but her accent made it sharp, each word hit true and Plutarch cringed. "How long have you been aware of this mistake?"

"Well…" the Gamemaker hesitated.

"The time it took to get to you." Haymitch said. He showed her his back. "See? I even took one for the team." His wording was deliberate. "I get you're angry, sweetheart, and I'm sure we're going to scream at each other before long but can we do it elsewhere?"

It was all about trust. Would she still trust him or not? He outstretched his hand again but she bypassed it completely, walking with her chin high in the air and a confidence she probably didn't feel. "I will accept that medical attention now."

As they walked to the medical wing, Haymitch couldn't have told who was escorting who. She walked a step in front of them, in a defying silence and with so much dignity every head turn on their passage. If Coin had wanted to weaken her or to make her appear defeated, it proved she really knew nothing about Effie Trinket. Each step she took screamed Capitol and the Capitol with its polished manners and proper behavior never bent the knee.

Doctors rushed to her when they entered but he waved them away to Plutarch's great annoyance. He requested Katniss' mother despite everyone's insistence that, while competent, the woman wasn't a real doctor. Haymitch wouldn't let anyone else approach Effie and he waited after her wound had been treated to let Mrs Everdeen take a look at his.

Coin arrived when Katniss' mother was starting to stitch him up. She repeated the same story about a dreadful mistake and expressed her hope that Effie would still be willing to cooperate. Effie wasn't more fooled than he was, even with the mild-sedative she had been given, but she still graciously accepted the apology that was never truly delivered and accepted to help where she could.

"There wasn't any choice." she told him later, when they were finally left alone. She was lying on her stomach on a hospital bed and he was sitting on a stool next to it. He was supposed to be on his own bed, of course, but Katniss' mother hadn't really expected him to obey that particular order anyway. "Either I'm a rebel or a Capitol prisoner. I have no wish to go back to those cells ever again."

"I won't let them." It was an empty promise though and they both knew it.

"I don't think you have that kind of power." she snorted. It was both mocking and bitter. "Perhaps next time you will be there right alongside me. President Coin doesn't seem to like you."

"She doesn't like anything that could disrupt her authority." he sighed.

"Well, between you and Katniss, she will get more than she bargained for." she taunted. "Do try not to bring me down with you when you get arrested. Once was enough."

"I wasn't trying to get you arrested, I was trying to save you, sweetheart." he snapped. She had a right to be angry, he supposed, but he was angry too – and sober which was something he should never be.

"Leave any further eventual rescues to me, then." she retorted. "I think I will fare better on my own."

"Don't worry." he sneered. "Next time, I will leave you to die."

"Good." she hissed.

"Good." he repeated.

They glared daggers at each other for a few seconds. He was the first to look away. He amused himself with opening and closing his hands for a while, the tremors never stopped even when he squeezed them into fists. They would never stop. His body was damaged beyond repairs.

"I suppose I should thank you." she whispered at some point. "You were under no obligation to take that strike for me."

He gave a one-shoulder shrug, careful not to move the heavily bandaged one. "What's one more scar, sweetheart?"

"Still." she insisted. "Thank you."

"Are you in pain?" he asked. "I can probably get them to give you more painkillers."

She shouldn't have been in pain and she shouldn't have had the scare she had. It was the reason why he had wanted her in Thirteen to begin with : to protect her from that kind of fate. It could have been worse, of course, Coin could have ordered her to be really questioned and not simply roughened around… It would have been a mistake however. She would have lost Haymitch's support and without Haymitch, her hold on the other victors would have weakened. Finnick would follow him, Beetee trusted his judgment, Katniss… Well, he wasn't sure about Katniss anymore.

"The pain is tolerable. I am alright." she objected.

He looked at her, studying the uncharacteristically hard line of her mouth. "No need to play the hero, Effie."

"You haven't known pain before you've walked on eight inches heels for a whole day." she argued. "This is nothing."

It wasn't nothing. He was hurting and he was sure he was more resilient to pain than she was. Still, if she wanted to pretend everything was alright and endure through clenched teeth, he would let her. It would simply give him the pleasure of an "I told you so" later on when she complained about being unable to move.

"You should have told me." Her voice was lacking the angry undertones from before. It wasn't exactly a rebuke but rather a sad observation.

"I couldn't." Her hair was still twisted in the half unmade bun. He started taking off pin after pin for lack of something better to do. It also forced his hands to get steady but despite his best efforts, he dropped more pins than he cared to admit. "I was trying to save us – all of us. It was safer for you if you didn't know anything."

"Even so." she whispered. "I thought you trusted me."

"I trust you." He combed his fingers through her tangled hair but he only managed to knot it more.

"Not enough." she commented. "Because I'm from the Capitol." She was bitter but he didn't have time to tell her she was wrong. "They're all the same, you know. If anything, today proved that. Rebels or Capitols… They're both as rotten. War is rotten."

"And power corrupts." He rolled his eyes. "Do you have more platitudes to share? We're not trying to win a goodness contest here, we're trying to free Panem. We're trying to get justice. We deserve justice."

"You're fighting for an ideal, you always have." she mused. "I admire that but Haymitch… Those rebels… Don't make the mistake to think they're fighting for the same reasons you do. They only care about winning their war."

"I am not." he offered and then chuckled without any real amusement. "Effie Trinket lecturing me on the fate of small people…"

"It will destroy Panem." she cut him off. "Why would you want that?"

"The Hunger Games have destroyed Panem." he corrected. "Snow has destroyed Panem."

"Or maybe it was Thirteen who destroyed Panem when they rebelled the first time." she argued. "It was so long ago. What do we know?"

"I know people I care about are in danger." He tugged on a strand of her hair gently, to make her understand she was concerned. "And I won't have that."

"So you will stand with people who hurt your…" Her sentence trailed off to an hesitant stop. "Well… Whatever I am to you."

What word did you put on a relationship that wasn't truly a relationship? He didn't know and neither did she probably.

"They hurt you but they didn't kill you." he pointed out. "In the Capitol, you would already be dead."

She didn't look convinced.

He wasn't either.