Prompt : have you ever written anything about the last paragraph of the post MJ effie hc you posted this morning? About haymitch knowing she's not well because of her not getting dressed up? Because that would be really cute :)
Healing
Living with Effie sometimes felt like living with a ghost.
Ever since she had arrived in Twelve with her four suitcases and a half-cooked excuse that she was only visiting for a few days – three month earlier – she had made a point of not being a nuisance to him. She had promised he wouldn't be able to tell she was staying with him and, most of the time, she held true to that promise.
Some days he didn't see her at all, either she went out to see the children or she spent the whole day locked in her room. He could only tell she hadn't moved out because of the fresh pot of coffee waiting for him in the kitchen every morning. And there was the nightly roaming, of course. She didn't sleep. She wandered around the house, he followed her progress through the creaking of the floorboards. Sometimes she sat in front of the TV for hours, sometimes she scrubbed the house, sometimes she flooded the living-room with all the lights she could turn on and curled up on an armchair. Sometimes he found her asleep on the couch and he covered her with a blanket.
She had good days and bad days.
On the best days, she would act like the overly cheerful escort he used to know, she would put on one of her colorful dresses, do her hair and make-up, visit the children and pester him to no end about something or other.
On the worst days, she wouldn't leave her bed and he would spend most of his time listening to any indication that she had pulled herself together, waiting nearby in case she needed him, waiting for a sign that she wanted his help. He didn't know why she had come to stay with him because she didn't let him in. She never answered his questions, never accepted his tentative offers to talk about her nightmares, never stayed longer than strictly necessary when he tried to hug her…
And then there were the days in between. They were neither good nor bad. She would get out of bed which was already something but she would stumble around the house in her dressing gown, her hair, still tangled from the night, loose on her shoulder or tied up in a hasty bun on the top of her head. She tried her best to avoid him on those days, she would sit in the kitchen, using her folded arms as a cushion on the table, staring at the peeling paint on the walls.
When she was like this, he usually left her to the demons in her head because he didn't know how to reach her.
That day, he had seen her tour the house twice in the bottle green sweatpants and the flannel blue shirt that had once upon a time been his but that had mysteriously disappeared from his clean laundry. It was getting cold, he supposed, and her nightgowns and dressing gowns were becoming too thin for the weather.
When she wandered in the kitchen and took her usual seat at the table, he followed under the pretence of making himself some tea. He didn't talk while he prepared everything and he didn't glance at her. She was staring at the wall again, her eyes were glassy. He didn't know where her mind was but it was clearly not there.
He placed a steaming cup of tea in front of her and took a seat at the table. She didn't flinch, she didn't move, she didn't acknowledge his presence at all.
He looked at the peeling brown paint on the kitchen walls and wondered what she saw, in some places the brown had turned grey.
"I was thinking of doing some redecorating." he said casually.
The sound of his voice seemed to rouse her away from whatever memory she was locked in. She blinked several times and looked at him, almost surprised to find him there.
"I beg your pardon?" she asked softly.
"Redecorating." he repeated, nudging the cup of tea closer to her. "What do you say?"
He had been mulling the thought over for some time now. He didn't particularly want to change things but maybe it could be a good thing, maybe it would help him remember the past was in the past.
"Redecorating…" she hesitated, her fingers curling delicately around the cup.
"Yeah." he shrugged. "I'm sick of how gloomy this house looks, aren't you?"
His house was a tomb he had buried himself in after his Games.
He had never intended to share it with her though. She was too lively, too vibrant to bury herself alive in there with him.
"We could go in town and find some paint." he suggested.
She studied her cup of tea, her brow furrowed. "Why?"
"'Cause I don't have any." he deadpanned.
"No." she sighed, refusing to take the bait. "Why do you want to redecorate?"
"Why do you spend so much time in the kitchen staring at the walls?" he retorted. He could have wrapped that up in diplomacy but he thought a blunt approach would be better.
Her fingers were shaking when she brought the cup of tea to her lips and some of the hot liquid slipped over the edge.
"It reminds me of my cell." she whispered. "I miss it sometimes."
"You miss your cell." he stated, completely taken aback by that confession. He hadn't thought that conversation was going to be easy but he wasn't prepared for that sort of statement so he stood up long enough to retrieve the bottle of liquor and poured a generous amount in his own cup of tea. After deliberating for a few seconds, he poured some into her cup too. He gestured at her to go on. "Okay, hit me up. You miss your cell."
"I know it sounds crazy." she muttered defensively.
"Yeah, it does." he confirmed. "But I've heard worse and I'm sick of you staggering around the house like a zombie. Tell me."
"Am I inconveniencing you?" she frowned, her eyes wide. "I apologize, I didn't mean to impose. I…"
He grabbed her hand because he knew it would make her stop talking. "I'm not kicking you out, sweetheart. I'm just worried. It's not like you to go around looking like that, that's all."
"It's just you. It doesn't count." she argued, looking down at her baggy unappealing clothes.
"Thank you." he scoffed.
"I don't mean it like that. You know what I mean." she insisted. "I don't need to put up a front for you. You do not care about me."
There was several wrong things with that statement but he started with the obvious. "I do care about you, sweetheart. If I didn't I wouldn't have let you invade my house."
"I meant about my looks." she sighed, rubbing her face. "I'm tired, I'm afraid. I do not make a lot of sense. Perhaps I should go back to bed."
"No." he objected. If he let her go back to bed, she would never get up again that day. "Why would you miss your cell?"
He was careful not to sound too judgemental but given the stricken look she gave him, he failed.
"Because I do not know how to live outside of it anymore." she admitted. "It feels like I've never left it at all and so it is easier to pretend I am still there and this is the dream. Maybe it is…"
"It's not. Don't go down that road again." he warned. It had taken days to convince her it was real after her rescue, that she had truly been freed. And it had been difficult to get through to her at all. He had had to repeat it again and again every time she had woken up.
"The grey walls made me sad at first. It was the worst thing I think, how utterly colorless everything was." she continued. "I have no reason to be sad now but I am. All the time. So I sit here and I stare at this wall there and I pretend I'm in my cell so I can pretend I am sad over something."
He took that in stride and then finished his cup in one long mouthful.
"That's it." he declared. "We're redecorating. No more grey anywhere."
He would come to regret this really fast, he knew, but if she needed colors, he would get her colors.
"Your eyes are grey." she pointed out. "But I do love your eyes."
He stopped her from taking another sip of her tea. Clearly, the small amount of liquor he had put in it had been enough to make her tipsy because she had certainly never declared loving his eyes before.
"You're in charge, Princess." he decided. "What color do you want in the kitchen?"
There were no other greyish walls anywhere else in the house so the kitchen would have to be painted first.
"It's your home…" she argued. "You should pick."
"You're living here too, aren't you?" he grumbled and then he cringed. "No pink on the walls." – or anywhere really but he wasn't holding his breath on that.
"Yellow?" she suggested. "A bright sunny yellow?"
"Alright." he agreed easily. Yellow wasn't bad. He could live with a yellow kitchen.
"And perhaps… Perhaps some deep orange for the curtains…" she hummed, looking a little more lively. "Give me a notepad and a pen, please. We need to write everything down. If you truly want to do this we will need a list."
Redecorating apparently involved a lot of discussion about furniture, space optimization and color coordination. They argued a lot about some things but he relented on others simply because it seemed to make her happy.
After an hour of talking, she excused herself to go get properly dressed so they could go out. He was happy to see her sauntering back down in one of her usual outfit, her hair carefully made up and with a light touch of make-up on her face. It wasn't about him finding her more beautiful all dolled-up – she was right about that he didn't care how she looked – it was about her only loving herself when she was wearing pretty dresses. When Effie Trinket stopped caring about the way she looked, the world could as well stop.
Perhaps, if he could find a reason for her to get dressed every day, then she would be less sad.
Perhaps he could help her heal.
And perhaps that would help him heal too.