Chapter 2: Packing Up Former Lives

I have to hold a hand to my mouth to keep in the deep, shuddering sobs that overtake me as I cry myself to sleep the night after Peeta comes home. I only get a few hours rest before a nightmare (this time, it's Mags walking into the poisonous fog before collapsing in a mad, spasmic dance) has me waking up screaming. For the rest of that night, I can only lightly doze off for a mere half hour, 45 minutes at a time.

Just after the first lights of dawn percolate through the curtains in my room, I hear a knock at the door downstairs. I'm still wearing my clothes and hunting jacket from yesterday, but don't bother to make myself presentable beyond a cursory combing of my bed-headed, chestnut strands. I pad downstairs through the kitchen and into the foyer, pulling back the door and bracing myself to face Peeta again. I'm not sure I want to, a part of me is still angry at him for leaving me – and that goes back further than just what he said last night when I asked him to come in.

I blink in surprise when I see it is Haymitch on my front stoop, looking relatively sober and even cleaned up. He isn't even sporting his trademark smirk, instead in favor of a genuine smile, albeit a tired one.

"Morning, Sweetheart." Sticking his neck out, he leans in a bit to further inspect me. Whatever he finds makes him chuckle. "Having bloodshot eyes is my job. Did you get drunk last night?"

"No," I huff. "Just cried myself to sleep." My mentor's face falls into an almost pitying look that I don't like at all, and I'm half-tempted to slap it off, except I don't have the energy. I'm too tired to do anything beyond sigh. "What do you want, Haymitch?"

"I need a favor. Mind hopping over to my place for a bit? I'm doing some spring-cleaning – culling, as it were – and need a hand. The Boy's over there already." At the mention of Peeta, I visibly wince, trying to hide it too late. Haymitch's eyes narrow in concern, and he's making that stupid, sympathetic face again. "Trouble in paradise?"

I'm not in the mood for his crass, country jokes at all, but only manage a grumbling, "Fine," and follow him across the green to his place. Up here on Victors' Hill, you can see much of the rest of the district for miles around. To the west, I can now observe the skyline on the horizon…. or what's left of it. There's the Justice Building, still standing tall and proud. Just beyond it are both the district school, and Lucy Gray Baird Train Station. Other than the Village mansions, these are the only buildings to escape the firebombings of District 12 unscathed – a sparing I have to believe was intentional. There are other standing structures, of course, but they're hollow shells of what they once were – the candy store, for instance, and also the apothecary run by my late uncle on my mother's side. Glass windows blasted out, bricks crumbling and charred. I have no idea how Peeta's family's bakery fared, and I'm almost afraid to find out. Peeta's old home is one of the few establishments not visible to me from here, and the lingering paranoia about radiation plus my own fear keeps me away. I can't imagine it would have survived. All I know is that my love's parents and two brothers did not make it out of the Square after the Quell ended – they weren't among the 800 survivors Gale led to Thirteen.

"Merow…." Something soft and furry brushes against my leg, as I mount the steps to Haymitch's porch, and I send a ghost of a smile down to Buttercup, who has followed me across the street. I'll hand the damn cat this much – he's mellowed with war and age. I almost regret that I once harbored a goal to cook him, and only my sister's affection for the little beast saved him.

Haymitch and I clop into his foyer, entering the kitchen. Peeta is standing beside the circular island, digging through an open drawer while his eyes are focused on a package atop the fine, imported granite from Two. When his sapphire orbs shift to me, he freezes, the concern in his eyes debilitating.

"Katniss…. Did you sleep well…..?" His voice trails off to barely a whisper as he asks what basically amounts to a rhetorical question. Peeta starts to circle the kitchen island, and I take a step or two back, almost huddling behind Haymitch.

The drunk rolls his eyes. "And here I thought we were past this…" he mumbles. Still, I have to appreciate Peeta's gallantry: he grants me my space.

I drift closer, peering at the package that Peeta is now just slicing open with a penknife, making sure all the while to keep the whole kitchen island between myself and my…. my former lover (I can't really think how else to refer to Peeta; my gut roils in agony at the wrongness of the term).

"Our real work is up in the attic, just some odds and ends – but this…. this arrived from Effie this morning."

"How?" I ask. "The country's still little more than an ash heap. The mail service…."

"…. has still managed to stay afloat and active, thanks to Boggs. He's the new Postmaster General. It's one of the few departments that's functioning at all at the moment."

Peeta is curling back the flaps of the package. Sticking his nose inside, he stares. "These are the 59 tapes of past Hunger Games. The ones we were watching! We had to leave them behind in the penthouse when we were sent into the Quell…"

"Not just the living 59," Haymitch smiles. "All of them."

My jaw drops. "All of them?"

"All 75." Willing myself to be brave, I float closer to Peeta and we begin to comb through the box together. Effie sent us the tapes of surviving Hunger Games Victors by mail before the Quell too; we were allowed to bring them with us onto the train. Like before, they're all still clearly labeled: Name of the Victor and age at the time of their Victory, the Numbered Games, and the Winning District. I'm only half-listening as Haymitch prattles on.

"Effie found these in the Training Center penthouse suite, just as we had left them, after we retook the Capitol. She's kept them safe, and managed to track down the other 15 or 16 or so within the National Archives…"

I hold up an accompanying note in Effie's loopy, perfect cursive, and read it half to myself: "Dearest Haymitch…." I can't resist sending an odd side-eye in Haymitch's direction, the tiniest of smirks asking him, What's that about?

There is a clatter as Peeta sets down a videotape deliberately, suddenly gripping the edge of the kitchen island hard as he begins to shake. Despite the angst from last night, my body and heart cry out to run to him and hold him, and it's all my muscles can do to refrain.

"Peeta…?"

Haymitch is the one who drifts closer. "Kid….? Peeta?"

Still gripping the edge of the counter, Peeta lifts his eyes to me, the tremors beginning to ease. "You kissed me on the beach, the evening of the second day. Real or Not Real?"

I smile tenderly. "Real. And it was the best kiss I've ever had in my entire life."

He blinks at this, cerulean irises sparkling, before releasing a long breath. In that moment, all the tension seems to leave him.

"Thank you."

I gulp, throat dry. "You're welcome." Drifting into his side, I weigh in my free palm the videotape he set down. NUMBERED GAMES: 75th Hunger Games, 3rd Quarter Quell, it reads. The rest of the categories – Name of Victor, Winning District – are left blank. Makes sense – there was no Victor for the 75th Hunger Games.

I can feel Haymitch's eyes still on us both, glancing back and forth between Peeta and me, so I turn the tables by going back to Effie's letter while Peeta continues to dig through the box: "Dearest Haymitch…." I even read it in Effie's exaggerated Capitol accent, and this time I smirk in satisfaction at how Haymitch is scowling. "Enclosed are all the videotapes of every Hunger Games…. except for one. I went through every channel in the national archives, but there was no record of it. I daresay this particular Games would be of great interest to you and the children, so I will do what I can to unearth it. Please accept apologies for my lack of due diligence in advance. All my love ~ Effie."

I lift my eyes in intrigued confusion. "I don't understand…. which tape is missing….?"

"14, 13, 12, 11, 9…. 9?" Peeta halts in fingering through the tapes in the box, doubles back, thumbing along the spines again. Before long, he's pawing through the thing. "Hold up – where the hell is Hunger Games #10?"

Haymitch makes no move to help; in fact, he's smirking, almost like he wants to laugh. "Come with me," he beckons with a finger, and ascends the stairs leading up to the attic. Glancing at each other, Peeta and I follow, my district partner carrying the box of tapes in his arms.

I've never had a reason to go up into the attic in my mansion, but I know that Mother kept things in storage up there when she and Prim moved in with me. The basement had even less appeal, as it serves as the Telephone Room – a desk with a red phone atop it serving as a direct line to the Capitol. Every Victor's mansion in every Victors' Village in every district of Panem had to have one; I've never gone in there.

As for Haymitch's attic, well, it's a clustered mess, just like the rest of his place. As I accept Peeta's proffered hand to gentlemanly help me up through the trapdoor at the top of the ladder, I glance up to where Haymitch is opening the drawer of a bedside table shoved in the dark back corner. Retrieving something, he crosses back into the light and holds it up, pinched between his thumb, index and middle fingers. He's still smirking like a thief who got away with a particularly good heist.

"You kids looking for this?"

Dazed, almost as if in a trance, I float over to Haymitch, all the while with memories surfacing – memories of standing in my blue Reaping dress in the school play-yard, in the shadow of a statue depicting a girl holding a rattler on high. Memories of thumbing through my textbook for Hunger Games History class, reading the one, solitary paragraph about that young woman with the rattler, and finding it odd why our teacher never played back her Games on the projector in class. Why there were no re-runs of it on Capitol holoTV, considering it is when District 12 received its first Victor…

"Is that….?"

Haymitch smiles smugly, though his voice is solemn as he intones, "Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the last and only known surviving copy of the 10th Annual Hunger Games. Won by the Victor Lucy Gray Baird…. District 12." He holds out the tape to me, and I take it in awe. Strangely, this cassette is labeled like all the rest of them:

Numbered Games: 10th Hunger Games

Winning District: District 12

Name of Victor: … Lucy Gray Baird, aged 16.

Peeta has floated to my side and we glance down at the tape between us. "She won at the same age we did, Peeta!"

"Snow's Roses Almighty…" Peeta breathes out, taking the tape from my fingers. "Haymitch, where did you get this? How?!"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you…"

"Bullshit we wouldn't, old man! Try us, why don't you?" I blast out.

Haymitch bursts out laughing. "Fair enough, sweetheart. At the end of my Victory Tour, I was holed up in the hospital for a day to go through a routine check-up. Just an exam to make sure a scar from my Games was healing appropriately."

Peeta glances down to the love handles around Haymitch's waistline. "That white line across your beer gut. From where the Career girl hit you with her axe."

Haymitch snorts. "Well, anything sounds terrible when you say it like that, boy…" I halfheartedly whack my district partner on the arm. "Anyway, Dr. Volumnia Gaul is the woman who examined me. She was very talkative as she was burning a tape of my X-rays, saying how she was glad District 12 finally had another Victor, and she happened to mention that she served as Head Gamemaker the year my predecessor won."

I take the tape back from Peeta, weighing it significantly. An epiphany strikes me – just a guess, really. "This was hidden. By that doctor after Lucy Gray won."

Peeta frowns dryly. "She seems like an awfully chatty Cathy if she wanted to keep this a secret…"

Haymitch is smiling and nodding. "Dr. Gaul had me under happy gas in order to examine me, and I suspect she started to get affected by it too, enough that she started running her mouth. We conducted the examination in her personal office, and I remember watching her move to a safe in the wall and opening it. She showed me the tape, sounding terribly pleased. Well, just then, Dr. Gaul was summoned away to be on-call with another patient, and I was left in her office… alone… with her personal safe still open…"

Peeta's eyes go huge, understanding where this is going. "You didn't…"

"Oh, but I did. Soon as the coast was clear, I stole the tape of Lucy Gray's Games from Gaul's safe. It was labeled like this, in her handwriting, and everything. Then, I took the videocassette containing the X-rays from my stomach scar out of the video monitor, found a pen and meticulously forged Gaul's handwriting on the side, labeling it just like the tape of the Games. I placed the X-ray tape into the safe, and took the Games tape home with me, smuggled in my coat."

My jaw is nearly on the floor. "You switched the tapes."

Peeta looks like he wants to genuflect at Haymitch's knee. "Abernathy, you son-of-a-bitch…"

"Whoo! You kiss your girlfriend with that mouth?" Haymitch wrinkles his nose. Chancing a look with Peeta, I feel my cheeks start to burn.

"And no one ever found out? Haymitch, you could have been killed!" I cry.

He just shrugs. "It was worth it. And no, no one ever did find out the real tape was missing. To her dying day, Volumnia Gaul still thought she had it."

Peeta starts to place the tape of the 10th Hunger Games back where it belongs with all the others, then pauses, eyes gleaming curiously.

"Have you ever watched it?"

At this, Haymitch's mirth dims, and he nods sadly. "I have. After, uh…. after my loved ones were killed, I would stay up some nights in this attic, and watch Lucy Gray's Games on that old TV set there." He nudges his foot to an old television model, probably imported from District 3. "The attic was the only place I could watch it safely, because it's the only room in the house that isn't bugged. I was terrified for a long time that Gaul or someone else would realize the tape had been stolen, so I didn't exactly want to broadcast my theft over the security footage filtered into the Justice Building." We weakly share a chuckle.

"What was she like?" I ask, softly.

Haymitch just shrugs again. "I… I never knew her, of course. They say she went missing not long after she came home from her arena. And it wasn't until after she vanished that the District turned a hill – this hill – into…. The Victors' Village."

"So Lucy Gray never lived here?" Peeta presses.

Haymitch shakes his head. "Nope. Didn't even have a Victory Tour. Mags always used to say she was the first to get one, and she won the year right after Lucy Gray."

"So Mags knew her?" I ask, breathless.

"Not really. Lucy Gray never mentored a single District 12 tribute. In those early days, Capitol seniors from the University were selected to mentor the tributes based on scholarship. It wouldn't be for a couple more years until Mags and the other Victors from the first decade of the Games would be required to mentor tributes."

"That makes sense," Peeta nods. "The process of the Games would surely have been refined throughout the early years. At the start, the system would have been flawed."

"That's right, Peeta. It would have been flawed. And I think some of the practices we recognized today – many of them – were implemented because of what happened in Lucy Gray's Games." Haymitch says this bitterly, darkly. I feel my heart start to hammer in my ribcage.

"What was it like?" I whisper.

"From what I can tell? A shit show. Not even all 24 tributes made it into the arena alive."

I'm shaking. "Not even all the tributes made it into the arena…. alive….?"

"One of them even managed to escape – and then was recaptured."

"OK, that's it: now we have to watch it!" Peeta crows.

"Later, boy, later," Haymitch waves away. Pulling a box to him, he opens it and begins to pull out leather-bound tomes. I step closer.

"What are these?"

"My mentor journals. There are 24 of them in here, including the Games from both of yours. You and Peeta never needed to learn this, thank the State, but every mentoring Victor was required to keep a meticulous record of what they did while working on the outside. Which sponsors they saw, alliance contracts they entered into, how much sponsor gift receivables cost. The Training Scores – things like that. I kept notes, about each of you, and was provided other materials, including your school records."

"Our transcripts are in here?" Peeta asks, finding a leather-bound book marked with a 74 and flipping through it. I oddly feel my face turn red, and I hope Peeta won't look at my grades. I would say I was a decently average student, but school still wasn't really my thing. A lot of the curriculum, I didn't see the point, as I figured I would be destined for the mines upon graduation anyway. And besides, the Seam had very archaic, traditionalist – one might even say sexist – ideas about what a Seam, district lady should have as an education. That education being not much beyond how to cook, how to clean, and how to lie on a bed and fuck so you could learn how to have babies.

I study Peeta as he pours over Haymitch's journals. I only ever shared one class with him, plus our lunch period. Beyond that, the student body was pretty segregated, with mostly Merchants and a few talented Seamers taking the advanced courses. I always knew Peeta was a good student, though. If he is reading my transcripts, he doesn't let on.

Hovering back over to the box of Hunger Games videotapes, I gingerly place the 10th edition back in its proper place, then thumb back over several until I pull the very first Hunger Games out of the box. The side of the cassette reads as follows:

Numbered Games: 1st Hunger Games

Winning District: District 2

Name of Victor: … Maximus Decimus Meridius, aged 18.

"The first Career…." I breathe.

Glancing up from where he and Peeta are rifling through more boxes, Haymitch spots what I am holding, overhearing me. "Oh, I wouldn't call anyone a Career at that point, sweetheart. But that's another story."

"What's another story?" Peeta glances between us.

I shrug. "Nothing. Haymitch and I had been planning to maybe re-watch all the past Victor tapes for our Memory Book."

"What book?" Peeta's brow creases.

"Sweetheart here was told by Aurelius to make a book of all the people we've loved and lost. All the people who fought, to help us cope. The homework's kinda meant for me too," Haymitch mumbles.

"I think that's a great idea!" Peeta beams. "I'd love to help!"

Suddenly, the sound of a knock at the door floats up the stairs to us. Peeta, Haymitch and I all look at each other. We're still the only ones living in the whole of Twelve, so…

"I wonder who that could be…?" Haymitch murmurs curiously, his hand floating to the pocket where his knife is kept hidden. Warily, Peeta and I follow him down the stairs….