46.

There was a building that you could see from almost every window on the west side of the Mansion. It was a skyscraper, one of the tallest in the cityscape, and Effie was entranced by it. Every time she passed by one of those windows, she paused to look at it. Sometimes, she got completely and utterly lost to the contemplation until someone came to get her.

It was disturbing.

She hadn't dared talk about it with Doctor Aurelius yet. They were still trying to sort out her feelings about her disastrous visit to her family and her deep reticence to ever go there again.

But the building…

She jumped when a hand fell on her shoulder, breaking her weird fascination with the tall square tower shooting toward the sky.

She wasn't sure how long she had been standing in the corridor staring through that window. She had been with Johanna but Johanna was nowhere to be found now.

It was Haymitch's hand on her shoulder.

Haymitch peering at her with worry.

"You scared me." she chided him.

"You scared me too." he retorted. "I've been looking for you and Jo couldn't tell me where the hell you were…"

There was a reprimand there but she let it slide, turning her gaze back toward the tower. "What's that building over there?"

Haymitch didn't even look. His grey eyes were riveted to her, searching… "Why?"

Why?

Wasn't that the question…

Why?

The itch was impossible to ignore when she was staring at that building. She could almost feel the door at the back of her head cracking open in invitation. The fog ready to roll out to dull her brain into submission.

And yet the fascination was utterly impossible to resist.

"I think I want to go there." she whispered. "Can we go there?"

Haymitch's hand left her shoulder but only so he could wrap his arms around her from behind. She leaned against him as he conducted his own inspection of the skyscraper…

"It's the Training Center." he told her eventually.

She searched her head for a moment but it didn't tell her anything at all. She shook her head. "I don't know what that means."

"It's part of the Games Compound." he clarified. "The Center… The Center's where we live when the Games are on. Were on."

"Oh…" she breathed out. It made sense, then… The feeling of familiarity made sense. The feeling that she needed to… "Can we go? Now?"

She had to.

It felt a little bit like when she had heard the old man play the violin for the first time in Thirteen. She had been helpless then. She had stood up and walked as if under a spell. It felt like the same thing right then. Every time her eyes caught a glimpse of that Training Center building, she found herself staring, lost to thoughts and memories she couldn't grasp.

Haymitch, however, wasn't sold. His arms tightened around her. "I guess… If I can find Brown or a medic… I don't want… If you've got an episode…"

"Yes." she cut him off, nodding. "Yes, that does sound reasonable."

Because an episode was almost guaranteed with the furious itching at the back of her head, she figured.

She was scared – or maybe a little hopeful – that he would make her wait for the next day but it seemed that a visit to the Games Compound was less difficult to organize than a visit to her parents. Plutarch, once they found him, was very accommodating. Apparently, the rebels were still combing the complex under the Headquarters – whatever that meant – but everything above grounds had already been searched so they were free to roam.

And Doctor Brown, once located in a field hospital nearby and escorted to the Mansion, seemed happy enough to see her. He insisted on examining her first thing, which took more time, but once the doctor was satisfied she was in good health and her headaches still manageable, things got into motion.

The building was so close it seemed stupid to take a car so they walked – escorted by a team of soldiers that didn't wear the grey uniform but came from the rebels in Eight, Haymitch explained as an aside, he trusted them more.

It was a short walk and Effie was entranced.

They had started clearing the City Circle of rubbles – and, thankfully, of all the bodies – but despite the destruction, the place felt so…

"Do we do this like we used to or do we ease her into it?" Haymitch asked, hands in his pockets to hide his nervousness, as they neared the giant building.

"I would advise caution…" Doctor Brown winced, adjusting his hold on the strap of the heavy medical bag slung over his shoulder.

"Like we used to." Effie decided, stubborn.

If she was to have an episode, she wanted it over with. She wanted… She hoped if she had an episode and recovered some knowledge of her past, it wouldn't be about the Games but about him. She hoped…

Haymitch took a deep breath, exchanged a reluctant gaze with the doctor…

"I make my own decision now." she reminded him, resisting the urge to tug on the plastic bracelet around her wrist that felt more and more like a shackle.

"Yeah." he reluctantly agreed. "Okay. Then grand entrance, it is… You're gonna have to imagine the screaming fans and the flashes of cameras, sweetheart."

The Compound had taken some hits and it was difficult to imagine anything, least of all fans or cameras, while they climbed the steps leading to the Center. There had been glass doors but they had been blown out along with most of the windows on the ground floor…

"Plutarch says the elevators are working." Haymitch told her. "Good thing cause you wouldn't want to do the stairs… We're going high."

"How high?" she asked curiously, slowly turning on herself to take in the view of the lobby. There was a big fountain in the middle but it wasn't working anymore and the statue had lost its head. It laid on the floor only a few feet away, full of cracks. She tried to picture the big space full of people in bright clothes but it wouldn't come. The itch was there but not… Not unbearable.

"Twelve's floor at the very top." Haymitch said, for her sake as well as Doctor Brown's. "We've got access to the roof." After a brief pause, he added. "The roof was sort of our place."

She flashed him a smile that she hoped was bright. "Then I cannot wait to see it."

He was wary but he forced a smile and a nod, pressing one of the elevator's buttons. The soldiers didn't follow them into the cage, falling out to guard the ground floor along with the few rebels already in place.

The elevator's walls on three sides, floor and ceiling were all made of glass and it was vertiginous.

"Oh…" Doctor Brown winced. "I wasn't expecting… How high are we going exactly?"

He didn't look very at ease.

"High." Haymitch answered, a bit laconic. "It didn't use to be glass. They changed it a couple of years ago. Fashion or whatever." He spared a smirk for Effie. "We liked it better when it wasn't glass."

It was no real trouble to imagine why and she gently whacked his arm but focused on the view. The elevator shaft was to the side of the building and offered quite a view over the city… As well an incomparable view of whoever was in it to passersby… Was that why it was all glass? It would fit with what she had been told of the Games life so far…

"It's very high…" Doctor Brown whispered, looking a little white.

"You're alright there, Doc?" Haymitch mocked but without hostility.

"I've never even been above ground before this war… It's an adjustment." the doctor admitted with a self-depreciating smile. "You should have seen me on the hovercraft."

Haymitch snorted. "You get used to it."

Did you?, Effie wondered. She had placed both hands on the glass wall to better see outside. She wasn't scared of the height. She found the view quite… beautiful. And she was filled with a warm wave of… love for the city spreading at their feet.

"Haymitch?" she hummed as she looked down through the floor. "With all this glass, couldn't everyone see under people's dresses?"

He chuckled. "Yeah, that was one of your concerns back then too."

It wasn't an answer but she blinked the worry away. She wasn't wearing a dress anyway. She was wearing her serviceable jumpsuit.

Everyone fell silent after that. It was a long ride. Haymitch was staring at the numbers flashing by at the top of the cabin, Effie was still staring greedily at the city as if she could absorb the sight and Doctor Brown was trying his best not to look uncomfortable with the height.

After a minute, the doctor cleared his throat. "I meant to tell you, I got a memo from Mellark's medical team. Apparently, they recovered a lot of research data in the…" The man's voice faltered as his eyes fell on her and he cleared his throat again. "In the hidden prison underneath. They had a whole floor that was all labs from what I understood…"

"They found out what they did to the kid? To Effie?" Haymitch asked but he didn't sound pleased. He sounded… angry. "Why did nobody tell me? I'm still responsible for…"

"They're still sorting the data, Mr Abernathy." Doctor Brown interrupted, lifting both hands in a peace gesture. "You weren't told because there's nothing to tell for now. We don't even know if we'll find anything relevant but… It's hope, right?"

"Right." Haymitch spat after a moment.

Effie didn't say anything at all. She did hope they found something to fix her and the boy but it felt like a very long shot.

Finally, the elevator chimed and the doors opened on a hallway. One last look at the glass wall told her they were as high as the skyscraper probably went in terms of floors.

Haymitch placed a hand at the small of her back but not to nudge her outside the cabin. "Are you sure, sweetheart?"

"Very." she whispered, taking a few steps out of the elevator.

The hallway was very elegant in a different way than the Mansion or her parent's house. It was, maybe, a mix of both. Classic and modern. The paintings on the walls were splashes of colors on an otherwise white painted surface but the furniture was rich wood and there were vases and…

Floorboards creaked a little under her boots.

It didn't make the right sound but she wouldn't have been able to say why.

Heels, the itch whispered but the first tendril of fog slashed and destroyed the realization, leaving her puzzled as to why she felt it didn't sound right.

She went right because it seemed like the place to go.

Haymitch followed but Doctor Brown hung back, muttering something about giving them privacy and telling them to shout if they needed him.

The living-room was…

She swayed a little but Haymitch's hand was suddenly there, between her shoulder blades. His grey eyes only briefly glanced around before settling on her, watching her.

She walked around. Here the floor was carpet, there were huge bay windows circling the room, the couches and armchairs were a pristine white, the huge screen on the wall was flashing statics but the sound had been muted at some point… Effie held her breath the whole time she toured the room until she couldn't tell if her head was spinning from lack of oxygen or from the terrible familiarity of it all.

It felt as if they had just popped out for a minute. The room seemed to have been waiting for them.

There was still an empty glass on the side table, a stack of what looked like fashion magazines on the coffee table with tabs poking out, a discarded bottle of pink nail polish that she distractedly pocketed without even realizing it, a grey suit jacket tossed over the back of an armchair and forgotten there…

For a moment, she could have sworn Haymitch was standing next to the window, wearing a white shirt with a waistcoat embroidered with golden threads, his sleeves rolled up and a smirk on his face as he nursed a glass full of an amber liquid…

She blinked and the illusion disappeared.

She blinked again and she had forgotten all about it, the fog slowly but surely coaxing her to relax, to stop thinking too hard.

She kept walking, passed an archway, found herself in a dining-room with a big table…

There was nothing much to see in there and it was less… It was less oppressing than the living-room somehow but she caught a glimpse of Haymitch's expression before he schooled it into a neutral one and she frowned. "Are you alright?"

"¨Peachy." he deadpanned. Then, he made a small face and shrugged, clearly making an effort. "It's just… There are a lot of memories in this place. Mostly all bad. But the few good ones… The few good ones are probably what kept me alive so long."

That was a more honest answer than she had expected.

"Tell me a good memory." she demanded, resolutely fighting the fog's tendrils that wanted her mind to go numb.

"In this room?" he asked, his lips stretching into a smirk. "You want the dirty one or the funny one? Though, I've got one that's both…"

Her eyebrows shot up at the implications and she looked around again until her eyes fell on the very sturdy looking table. "Really? Here?"

"Oh, yeah…" He chuckled, sounding very pleased with himself.

"But didn't we eat here?" she insisted, flabbergasted. That seemed very unhygienic.

"Hopefully, they cleaned the table in between." he teased. "Though, to be fair, sweetheart, you won't find an inch of this penthouse we haven't fucked on." He tilted his head and amended. "Maybe some of the bedrooms. We never used any but yours or mine. But everything else? Fair game."

Well, wasn't that overwhelming for another reason entirely, she mused, her face flushing a deep crimson. It was too easy to imagine, actually, and when she dropped her eyes back on the table…

"What's the funny dirty story?" she asked in a whisper.

Probably conscious that the doctor was somewhere in the penthouse, he lowered his voice a little. "One time, I fucked you on this table and you managed to pull a muscle in your back in the middle of it… Had to get you dressed and down to the Clinic…"

She frowned. "How is that funny?"

"Wasn't on the moment." he admitted. "But we laughed about it a lot after… Became a private joke, I guess." He shrugged, suddenly ill-at-ease, as if he had just realized you couldn't have private jokes with someone who didn't remember them. "You played poker with us for the first time in here too. It was strip poker cause Chaff insisted… He thought you'd be an easy mark. You wiped the floor with him. Finnick was torched, I wasn't much better… Fuck, you had us all naked by the end of the night and you only lost a glove. It was… It was a good night."

It sounded like one so she smiled but she couldn't help a tinge of sadness because, try as she might, the memories didn't trigger any itch.

She took the second door in the dining-room and found herself back into the hallway where Doctor Brown was studying one of the framed artworks on the wall.

"Bedrooms are that way." Haymitch pointed out. "Or… Do you wanna go to the roof first?"

"Yes." she approved, thinking some fresh air might do her good. "The roof sounds good."

She followed him to a small hidden corridor and up a flight of stairs to a steel door that he propped open with a brick obviously left there for that very purpose. A good part of the rooftop was flat concrete but she caught sight of greenery in the corner of her eyes and took a few steps toward what seemed to be a garden…

"We never go over there." Haymitch called behind her and, when she turned around, he shrugged. "My arena was… I don't like bright flowers."

"So we didn't plant the garden?" she asked, confused. Why was it on their roof if they hadn't planted the garden?

He shook his head. "Don't know who did. It was already there when I was a tribute. I think you added the wind-chimes though…" He waved an arm at the concrete area, taking a few steps toward the hip-high wall. "Our spot's here. No bug can pick up anything up here, we can talk freely. Mostly, you smoke and I drink… Sometimes we fuck."

His eyes were lost in the distance or to the past, she wasn't sure.

"It's a nice spot." she commented, joining him next to the wall.

And it made her headache flare so she had no trouble believing it was special. She tried to regulate her breathing like Doctor Aurelius had showed her, to count between breaths, to visualize a candle slowly consuming itself… Anything not to let herself get lost to the fog.

"Funny… I've always thought of the roof as ours but I never really let myself think it until you were gone." he confessed, his voice rough. "Same goes for the penthouse, really. I was so stupid, Effie… So fucking stupid…"

She leaned against his side because she didn't have the words to comfort him right then, she was a bit afraid her brain would betray her and she would struggle to speak. He wrapped an arm around her immediately and pressed a long kiss on the top of her head.

After a couple of minutes, he let out a deep breath. "I hate this place. It's fucking complicated 'cause it's all tied to you and you made a lot of things better but… I hate this place. Too much pain. Too much death. Once we leave, I don't wanna come back. Ever."

"Alright." she accepted easily enough, making an effort to push the word out of her uncooperative mouth.

Whatever siren call had been luring her here didn't seem to be panning out anyway.

The itch was strong, the headache bad and the fog was slowly gaining ground but it wasn't worse than at the Mansion.

And it eased once they left the roof, Haymitch giving it a long last bittersweet look. He led the way toward the hallway with their bedrooms. He explained there were more hallways and more bedrooms on the opposite side of the penthouse but that they never went there. Unlike other Districts, they had been a small team and, as human nature often dictated, they had all stuck close to each other.

He pointed out Peeta's and Katniss' bedrooms on the way but didn't suggest they stepped in. Then he paused at an open door she immediately knew was his. She knew because she recognized the messy clutter from their time in Thirteen. Clothes on the floor, a few books piled around, a forgotten mug, unmade bed…

She took a few steps around his room, the itch scratching at the backdoor of her mind again, begging it to open…

There was no question she had been there before.

No question.

She didn't remember it but she knew it deep in her guts, the same way she had known her parents' house.

Something glittery caught her eyes on the bedside table – on her side of the bed. She picked up two diamond earrings.

"Must have forgotten them one night…" he commented, leaning against the threshold. "Not sure when cause we spent most nights in your room during the Quell… You didn't like mine. You said it was a pigsty, just like my house."

"I was not wrong." she hummed, distractedly studying the earrings. They were big and clunky and they must have been so heavy…

He snorted. "Didn't do so bad in Thirteen, yeah?"

There was a hint of uncertainty in his voice, as if he truly was looking for a pat on the back because she had made him pick up after himself.

"Did you hang your clothes in the wardrobe like I asked you or are they still balled up in the bag?" she retorted. Even though it had been close to two weeks since they had arrived in the city and there had been a few round of laundry in between.

"Bossy." he accused.

Breaking free of the diamonds' strange spell, she pocketed them and turned away. She wanted to keep the banter going but her brain wasn't exactly cooperative and bantering required wits she didn't have at her disposal right then. It was an effort to smile and try to hide the fact the headache was becoming really bad.

Haymitch wasn't fooled. "Wanna see your room?"

She didn't try to nod, not with the vice around her head, but she flashed him a small smile. She followed him a couple of doors down the corridor and…

Oh.

Everything in that room was meticulously arranged. The only thing that could have been called untidiness was the red silk dressing gown abandoned on the foot of the bed.

She swallowed hard but stepped inside the room, turning on herself to better see everything. The light streaming from the windows was hard on her eyes – or maybe it was just the headache. Haymitch had wandered in too, looking sadder than he probably realized, but Effie's attention didn't linger on him. She couldn't. Not when it was hard to keep moving, to keep…

If she stopped to think, if she paused to reflect, she knew she would collapse.

Her footsteps took her to the big wardrobe. She pushed the doors open only to find it overflowing with fabrics, with outfits. Her fingers reached inside on their own volition and she picked up a few dresses, stroking the fabric almost reverently before placing them back inside…

She felt… something in her chest.

Something she hadn't felt when faced with the collection of dresses in Katniss' closet in Twelve.

Those were… Well, objectively they were weird and puffy and impractical but a part of her whispered that they were beautiful. The colors, the fabric, the shapes…

"They're mine." The words slipped past her lips.

Haymitch shot her a strange look from where he was standing next to the dresser. "Yeah."

"Can I take them?" she asked, again before she could think it through.

Then she clamped her mouth shut because the pain was making black dots dance in front of her eyes and she wasn't sure she wouldn't be sick if she kept talking. Her own voice was echoing weirdly in her ears…

"Sure." He shrugged. "Don't see why not."

With a lot of reluctance, she abandoned the wardrobe, still clutching a blue dress to her chest like a shield or a safety blanket, and joined him next to the dresser. She opened a few drawers, let her fingers run over soft and lacy fabrics… Lingerie. That was what it was called. Not just underwear. That was a plebeian simple term that didn't apply to the things in those drawers. It was lingerie.

And pajamas. Shorts and tops and nightgowns…

"I want that too." she blurted out.

Haymitch granted her wishes with a careless wave of his hand, as if it was an easy request.

"Do you want me to call the doctor?" he asked instead, watching her with some wariness. "You're pale and you're sweating."

She brought a hand to her forehead to find it clammy.

Not very pretty, she mused, her feet taking her to the dressing table.

There was a lot to see on that table. Jewelry hanging from metal contraptions and piled in an open box lined with red velvet inside, three different golden wigs styled in impossibly weird ways, a lot of make-up bottles, creams, lipstick tubes… Enough things to make her head spin…

She grabbed a bottle at random. It was a glass bottle, delicately chiseled to look like a horn of some sort… There was a name on the bottle but she couldn't read it. She could spell it though but the letters strung together made no sense: C-O-R-N-U-C-O-P-I-A. The top of the horn wasn't properly aligned with the rest and she realized it was a cap. With shaking hands, she twisted it open…

The smell hit her hard.

It was strong and pungent and aggressive…

It smelled like…

It smelled like money.

Except it wasn't possible, was it? Because money didn't have a smell and…

"That's the one you put on for parties or when you're in the mood to slay someone's reputation…" Haymitch explained. He was standing much closer than she remembered and his voice was a little distorted, as if it came from underwater. "This one's the one you use when you're staying in or… When it's only the two of us."

He had picked up another bottle of perfume, one chiseled like volutes of smoke. She didn't protest when he gently took her hand and sprayed some on her wrist because she didn't have any fight left in her. She raised her hand to her nose and took a whiff and… The smell was more subdued but no less intoxicating. If the first one smelled like money, this one smelled like seduction and… She had a vague idea of picking up the bottle and spraying the perfume on the inside of her wrists, rubbing them together and then behind her ears… Of picking up the bottle again and, with a playful smile, to add a spray of it between her breasts…

She blinked, unable to tell if she had just done that in the present or in a distant past.

If…

"Doc!" Haymitch called out suddenly.

He had shouted but she barely heard it.

She barely…

She was on the floor.

There was a rug, a pink one, and Haymitch was lying her down on top of it with care, his grey eyes wide and worried.

"Don't die on me." he ordered. "Don't fucking die on me, Effie, not in this fucking place."

Her body seized just as Doctor Brown's face appeared above her.

Something pricked her arm.

A needle?

She didn't know.

She wasn't sure.

The fog wrapped around her.

Her eyes were opened but she couldn't see, not really.

Someone was talking but she couldn't hear.

Calling her name.

Her name.

What was her name?

People had names, didn't they?

And she was a person, wasn't she?

She was…