Chapter 10: Lucy Gray Baird

Almost 41 years after the events of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Haymitch's POV

I turn off the battered old TV sitting in this corner of my attic and take another long swig from the bottle, pondering the happenings that just occurred on my screen. That was… that was something.

I find just enough energy to lift myself off of the couch and press the eject button, sending the pilfered videotape into my waiting palm. I turn the copy of the 10th Annual Hunger Games over in my hands, sighing with a potent combination of sadness and frustration. If only I had had this before my Victory Tour… what a piece of blackmail I would have had on Snow. I could have checkmated the bastard into leaving me alone. It's his own damn fault his engineers were too stupid to secure their own infrastructure. The old fart is probably just jealous he doesn't have my wits, and Panem knows elitist Capitolite scum like him can't take a joke. The Games are as much about entertainment as they are about killing, so by that metric, who do you think Snow should prefer to have as the Victor of a Quarter Quell: a surprise underdog, or yet another boring Career?

I chuckle, smirking. Yeah. I thought so.

Heaving myself off the couch, I carefully tuck the stolen videotape of the Games that produced the first Victor from District 12 into the drawer of an unused bedside table. Just for good measure, I click a padlock closed over the drawer by threading it through a hole I driveled into the wood. The padlock I found the first day I moved into my mansion; there were little combination things locked over all the cupboard doors in the kitchen.

I should probably be grateful that I am so smart, and that everything I need to stay careful – stay alive – is right here. When I first got home from the Victory Tour with Lucy Gray Baird's Games smuggled in my jacket, I had no idea where I was supposed to watch it safely. I have a sick flatscreen TV in my downstairs living room, but I couldn't curl up with a good movie like this in there – I know the rooms are bugged. I spent several weeks combing along the crevices in the walls in each and every room, eventually finding at least one in each. Bedroom. Bathroom. Kitchen. Even the basement that doubles as the Telephone Room – every Victor in every Victors' Village in every district of Panem has to have one. It isn't much, just a desk with a big red phone atop it that gives us a direct hotline to the Capitol. Except for that one time, I've never gone in there since.

The one place where I didn't find any bugs (and I turned the room inside out) is the attic. That's also where I found the old TV set, in a stroke of good luck. So I watched the Games I shouldn't know about up here, away from spying eyes.

Lucy Gray's year was only just starting to show signs of the refined process we all know by now, but back then, several aspects of it were historic. The first time mentors were allowed, though tapping students from the Capitol University to do the deed turned out to be a disaster. I'm kinda bummed that the vessel for sponsor gifts was downgraded from drones (wicked!) to harmless little parachutes. That girl from 3 could have won it all if she'd just had more drones to hotwire. And, of course…. the bombing of the Capitol Arena itself. I didn't think the tape would show something like that – the playback of my Games didn't show Maysilee and I burning away the hedge and discovering the edge of the arena. To think rebels actually struck a blow at the heart of the Games…. there's hope!

Except now, four decades on, the Capitol has adapted. The Games are never held in the same place twice anymore, and tributes and Victors are treated like kings. If we were still transported in cattle cars and held in cages, maybe more people would wake up and see the system is still the shitty same, just with better window dressing.

I stagger down the steps from the attic, the half-empty bottle of liquor swaying like a metronome in my hand. Pausing on the landing, I chuckle to myself. I had always found it odd that our teacher in Hunger Games History class mentioned Lucy Gray Baird (always via the one small paragraph about her in our textbook that even then seemed suspiciously sparse), odd that there is a giant statue of her out in the school play-yard and yet… we were never shown her Games in school. We were allowed to see even earlier ones – the Games in the single digits. Most of these were absolute free-for-alls that didn't even last a day, the tributes given no help, no nothing.

Trudging into the foyer, I turn back and survey the darkened home, shadowed in gloom except for places where the light of the full moon shines in from the window. Home sweet home… and it's gloomy and lonely.

I feel something soft brush against the outside of my bare foot and I jump back with a yelp, thinking it's a spider. No. Just a dust bunny.

Spooky. And dusty too. Sierra would tell me I have to clean.

Sierra… I take another swig from the booze as I think of my sweet, beautiful girl… She was feisty, in her own way and especially when she was trying to make a point. She always strove to bring out the best in me, even when I didn't want to. The smile that comes across my face as I think about how hard I worked to court her (she'd needed a lot of convincing to go out with me), about our first kiss, quickly turns into a bitter grimace and I take another slug. Nothing to do about it now… She's gone, and she isn't coming back. I fought like a dog to get back to her and Haydyn, my little brother, and what was it all for? We were going to be a family; Sierra and I were going to take care of Haydyn (more gentle and slower in the head than most, like that kid who won back in the 5th from Ten) once Mother got too old to do it herself. A Toasting, perhaps…

I shake my head in disgust, dropping the liquor bottle – three-quarters empty – into the trash. Pointless now.

I stumble out into the chilly winter air, still with it just enough to pull on some boots. The snow-covered Village is silent as the grave – an entire neighborhood just for little old me. When I'd first moved in here, I had asked an officer on duty which house had belonged to Lucy Gray Baird. He looked at me as though I had three heads, something which told me that Victors' Village may not have existed up high on this hill, back in her day.

Up here on Victors' Hill, you can see for miles, all the way clear out to the district school. The school play-yard is well illuminated at night, on account of the spotlights that shine down on the statue of Lucy Gray Baird… and now, a statue of me, cocksure smirk on my face and with my trusty knife at the ready. The thing was unveiled in a public ceremony at the opening to my Tour. I made some quip about how it was gaudy and a disgrace to good art. I think the Mayor half-considered killing me right then, if he'd thought he could get away with it.

I stroll out into the Village green in the center of my one-man gated community, then turn left to exit through the gates and begin making my way down the crest of the hill. I pull the overcoat I had enough presence of mind to get off the hook tighter around myself. Not sure what the temperature is – maybe high 40s, if I had to guess. I might encounter a Peacekeeper out on patrol, but I'm not worried – everyone in Twelve is supposed to be in under curfew by this time… except for me. It stunned me a little at first just how much free reign I had to do whatever I wanted now that I was a Victor.

I reach the bottom of Victors' Hill, then turn right and go about a hundred yards to where there is a section of district fence. I've come to realize that the electric fence is off more than it's on, but I have to yet to venture out into the meadow or the woods beyond. Sierra didn't like the woods; she used to say it was dark and creepy. Haydyn was afraid of them even more, especially after Mom used to tell him all those bedtime stories about the scary mutts in the forest that would eat you.

Huffing out a breath on the air, I duck brazenly under the fence and cross the Meadow before I have time to change my mind. A walk will do me some good… and at least here, I won't have to see a reminder of my girl or my little brother every few steps.

I resolve not to go very far, and count off my paces in a straight line carefully. After 200 steps, I pause to rest on a low log. I'll just sit here for a time until I'm ready to go back, or my toes tell me they're in danger of getting frostbite should the temperature drop much lower…

I fall asleep.

I must have fallen asleep, for when I wake up, all the trees around me – the forest beyond District 12 – is burning.

Things can burn even in crisp, nippy winter air like this, and I leap to my feet with a startled shout. How did this blaze start? A lightning strike? It's been overcast, though there's been no rain.

With no time to think on it further, I pull my overcoat up over my nose and do an about-face, running back the way I came and trying to count backwards from 200. But I quickly run into a wall of fire and have to circle back around.

This can't be real. This must be a nightmare. Or I'm back in the arena after being abducted once the Capitol decided, 'Just kidding. We want a do-over so we can have a proper Victor.' But if that's what this is, I don't see any other tributes.

Wait… There! A shape through the smoke seems to fly like a bird as it leaps and bounds in my direction. Snarling, I turn and charge for it, even though I don't have a knife, I don't have a weapon, and the dark shape is nearly on top of me when…

WHAM! Something kicks out into my chest and I am flung back into the damp leaves with a crash.

My vision blurs, as I roll over onto my side, groaning, trying and failing to get up. I think I see a dark shape loom over me. Then my body is floating.

At first, I think I'm dying and going into that Beyond my mom used to whisper about, where I can only hope she and Haydyn and Sierra are now waiting for me. Except that the flames are still here, and I'm coughing as I and the thing I'm draped over bounce along.

Just after we break through the treeline and out into the Meadow, my head lolls forward.

It seems like only seconds later when I feel a splash of cold water douse my face. I sit up, coughing and spluttering, to find that I might be in the darkness of my dusty kitchen, but my eyes can't adjust to the light fast enough to tell. The full moon catches on a mysterious figure sprawled in my one easy chair, studying me.

"Where… where am I?"

"You're safe… in the Victors' Village." There's a strange combination of cockiness and bitterness to her voice. I can tell by her tone that she's definitely a woman.

I peer at my rescuer curiously, warily, as I struggle to my feet. Even with the glow of the moon coloring everything oddly, I can see little flecks of gray streaking in her thick, curly black hair. Her eyes are the same shade of grey as mine.

"Out for a moonlit stroll when a lightning storm moves in… what the hell were you thinking, boy?!"

"Well, I didn't exactly check the forecast before heading out for a walk…."

She snorts. "More fool you. Clearly, you don't know these woods."

"Oh, and I suppose you do?"

She frowns hard. "A simple thank you would suffice!"

I chuckle derisively. "Listen, sweetheart," I smirk, swiping a new bottle of liquor from the counter and pulling the cork. "I don't need help from anybody."

"You say that now…" the woman mutters dryly. There's something creepy about the way she says it. "Everyone needs help if they want to survive the Games, and even after too."

I stare at her for a moment, chastising, bewildered. "And what the hell do you know about the Games?"

She purses her lips in a grim frown. "I know enough – more than you might think. I've been watching you, Haymitch Abernathy."

"So now I've got a stalker. How lovely," I drawl sarcastically. "If it's all the same to you, I'd like you to get out!"

"Fine. Just don't kill yourself because you're too yeller to go on. Those kids are going to need you this coming year. And the next one, and the next one…"

"If you know so much about the Games," I sneer. "Why don't you just mentor those dead corpses walking yourself? You'll probably do a better job of it than I will…" I'm already dreading my first summer as a mentor and it's still close to six months away.

The woman's eyes go wide with something that might be fear and she shakes her head. "I can't come back. Not now. He would kill me the first chance he got…"

"Come back? What do you mean 'come back'? And who's 'he'?"

The woman just shakes her head again, standing. "I wish I could help you more, even if you say you don't need it. But your loved ones who died for you need you alive, son. Twelve needs you alive. I need you alive…."

"You need me alive? – lady, you don't even know me!"

"I know you're a fighter. And I know you're a Victor. After all, it takes one to know one." She's backing away, smiling sadly. "Just don't give up. You can do this, Haymitch."

I know I told her to get out, but I can't escape this nagging feeling of wanting her to stay. This nagging feeling that I've seen her somewhere before. "I can't," I mumble brokenly, for once allowing myself to sound defeated. "I'm a dead man walking."

"I don't believe that. You can't be dead so long as you know how to stay alive. When it is your time… let others decide that. Not you. But it's not your time yet. Not yet. " The woman smirks, and then opens my mansion door to take her leave, slipping out into the night. I turn away, take another chug from the bottle.

All at once, I hear an eerily familiar voice waft back to me on the wind:

"You're headed for heaven, the sweet old hereafter, and I've got one foot in the door. But before I can fly up, I've loose ends to tie up, right here in the old therebefore…"

Glass shards dig into my boots as the liquor bottle slips from my hand and shatters on the floor. No…. it can't be…. I'll be Snowdamned….

I lunge out of my house and pelt to the gates at the crest of the hill, hands cupped around my lips and calling her name. "Lucy! LUCY GRAY BAIRD!"

The only thing that answers me is the wind.