5

Haymitch had this feeling Katniss would do something reckless before the night was through.

Not that he could do anything about it for now, he reminded himself, staring at his pitiful reflection in the mirror before splashing water on his face. All he could do right then was trust she would obey his instructions and not try something foolish like break into The Capitol to rescue people – and hope Hawthorne wouldn't get them both killed by doing the stupid thing.

He would have been so much happier if it had been Peeta with her instead of that boy…

But Peeta was still asleep.

Prim was keeping an eye on him – at a distance – just like she was keeping an eye on him – still at a distance because he had insisted when she had come to get all the liquor out of the room.

Cinna's potions tasted like dirty socks.

He thought it might have been revenge for hiding the fact Portia might have been kept in the Capitol.

Haymitch had gagged when the warlock had made him swallow them and he still wasn't sure he wasn't going to throw up. Spending the night in the bathroom was tempting but, eventually, he dragged himself back to the bedroom, carrying a bucket behind him like the wreck he was, and dropped on the side of the bed Effie wasn't currently lying on.

Her arm had moved.

It was over the blanket now.

That was good, surely…

That meant that she wasn't dead for sure – and, yeah, he had been checking her pulse regularly but she looked so pale and still that… And that also meant she might be getting warm under the heap of blankets he had piled on her.

And since she was warm, he didn't feel too much guilt stealing one for himself because he was shivering again.

He lasted two minutes before it became suffocating and he tossed it away.

He was running a fever, that was obvious to him. He felt terrible. Like he was about to throw up every two seconds, his middle-section hurt with cramps, the shaking of his whole body was actually painful… Cinna had said the potions would lessen the effects but if that was what it was like when the withdrawals were tuned down, he was never touching another drop in his life – or he was never getting sober again, whatever worked best in his favor.

He supposed it could have been worse.

There were no nightmarish hallucinations and as bad as the fever was, he was still mostly lucid enough that he didn't think it was a risk to be so close to Effie. He wasn't scared he would accidentally hurt her. Not for now. If that changed, he would go and lock himself in the bathroom.

The bathroom wasn't bad. It didn't have the bed but it had the toilet.

He tried to doze off and sleep, being unconscious for the worst part of this seemed great, but he couldn't stop his mind from running ahead. He worried about Katniss, he worried about Effie and the boy, he worried about Cinna who had run off on his own to find a witch…

He couldn't sleep.

He rolled on his other side, turning his back to Effie, and curled up in a vain effort to control the pain. His grey eyes fell on the leather journal on his nightstand. Like all other Watcher journals, it was beautiful – or it had been before passing in his clumsy hands. It was supple, leather bound and with crispy blank pages… The kind of journals you only find in rare stationery shops nowadays.

He had filled five of those journals. This one was his sixth.

It would also be his last and he might not get to finish it. He imagined once he would finally get over himself and talk to the Council, Effie would be taking it over as she would officially become the active Watcher…

He needed to chronicle the Reaping first, though. Katniss was still his Slayer and this was still his responsibility. He would bear the blame for that fiasco.

"Hello, Mitchy Bitchy."

He startled, his gaze darting from the journal to the foot of the bed. His stomach churned for brand new reasons.

"You're not real." he mumbled.

Of course, she wasn't real. Because Mabel Larson had been dead for close to twenty-three years. She had no business sitting crossed-legged at the foot of his bed.

Fuck, he had hoped he wouldn't get the hallucination stuff, that the potions would prevent that… Cinna had promised he would mostly stay lucid, that they didn't need to lock him up or tie him down…

He braced himself for the reproaches anyway, the accusations… He was too used to this particular dance in his nightmares.

"What's real?" Mabel made a face. "You know me, I'm not good with the philosophical questions. It's like I always told Mags…"

"Point me in the direction of what needs killing…" they finished at the same time and Haymitch closed his eyes because that part was painful to remember.

Mabel had always been a touch reckless, more than he would have liked.

"Yeah." She grinned and it was that same grin that had made his heart clench when he was younger. "You don't look good."

"Ain't dead yet." he countered. "Give me the speech and go away."

She tilted her head to the side with a small frown. "What speech?"

"You know… I hate you, it's your fault I'm dead…" He snorted. "That one."

Her face softened. "Oh, Haymitch… Of course, I don't hate you and, of course, it's not your fault I'm dead. I'm glad you survived."

Well, that was a nice change. Maybe the potions were useful.

"I'm good at that, turns out. Surviving." he commented with self-loathing. He allowed himself to look at her a little more fully. She looked sharper than in his usual nightmares. Her features were neater, the colors were less vibrant than, say, the blue comforter but they were still much more vivid than they usually were… His ghosts were all in grey.

Mabel looked… not alive but…

Her long straight dark hair was loose and fell past her shoulders, she was wearing the same typical clothes she used to wear on patrol: black leather pants and a black tank top, and there was that thing around her neck that had been so popular with the girls in the late nineties… It was a cheap plastic choker that sort of imitated a spirally tattoo. Mabel never took it off. It came in all the colors of the rainbow but Mabel's had been a crimson color that had washed away to a pale red at some point…

It was stupid but it was the choker that made Haymitch's throat close.

She had loved that stupid thing.

She wanted to get a real tattoo just like it.

She never had time to get one.

Her grey eyes were fixed on him, a bit sad. A bit knowing.

"You don't look like my usual hallucinations." he grumbled, almost regretting it. This one was certainly nicer but she was also closer to the real thing, which made it more difficult.

"Maybe I'm not a hallucination at all." she pointed out. "Maybe I'm a ghost. Maybe because of the withdrawals and the potions you are in the right frame of mind to be haunted."

"Wouldn't mind you haunting me all the time if you're like this." he admitted before he could think better of it.

It never paid to encourage hallucinations.

Was it possible, though? That she was actually Mabel? Ghosts existed, that wasn't a question. And there were multiple instances of a dead Slayer's spirit coming back to guide another Slayer down the right path in the Watcher journals. But a Slayer visiting a Watcher? He couldn't remember that happening.

"Oh, trust me, Mitchy Bitchy, you would mind after a while." she chuckled. "Your girlfriend would have to banish me."

He winced. "She ain't… She ain't my girlfriend."

He forced himself to prop himself up against the headboard just so he could face Mabel and keep an eye on Effie at the same time. She hadn't moved again. Her arm was still over the blankets but in the same position.

It hurt to look at her.

She looked so fragile, so hurt, and…

I love you…

His silence had been damming.

I thought so.

It was that last part that made him feel most guilty.

But the mere thought of entertaining the idea of love right then...

"Why?" Mabel asked in a soft voice.

He looked back at her, his guilt deepening ten-fold.

"You know why." he dismissed. "I love you."

The words were so easy when it came to tossing them at a dead girl.

"I'm sixteen forever and very dead." she argued, a touch of teasing in her voice. "That's creepy."

"You know what I mean." he grumbled.

"I know what you think you mean." She shrugged. "And I also know you're being an idiot." She propped her elbow on her knee and rested her head in her hand, watching him. "An idiot who's lying to himself."

He didn't want to hear any of that so he groaned. "I'm an idiot with a fever who's talking to a figment of his imagination so why don't you fuck off where hallucinations live? I like it better when you come and scream at me that it's my fault you're dead."

"But it isn't." she snapped. "I was never going to live forever, Haymitch. Hell, we both knew I would never live to see eighteen."

He shook his head in denial. "You could have. Some Slayers…"

"Yeah. The great ones." she cut him off. "Most of those you trained yourself. Me? I was too reckless. Mags knew it, ask her. I was always running toward danger instead of pausing to think. I was always going to die young. I had a death wish. You're the only one who was hoping for a miracle, Haymitch."

"No." he refuted. "You were…"

"The only reason anyone remembers me at all is because I was one of the Seam's Slayers." she interrupted again. "Death is my gift."

He flinched. "Don't."

Annie had been repeating those words again and again toward the end. So much that it had haunted him during his sleep well before she drowned.

Death is my gift, she would say under her breath again and again… So broken, that girl. So broken… Finnick might have put her pieces back together given time… But then… Well, then the Selkie had come. And he still wasn't sure it was the demon who had killed her, he still wasn't sure she hadn't let herself drown.

"Do you understand what it means?" she asked, not unkindly.

"I don't care what it means." he spat.

"I am at peace, Haymitch. The moment I died, I was at peace." she explained anyway. "It was my reward."

"Bullshit." he snarled.

"Of course, Slayers are also very good at killing so you might want to interpret that the literal way but…" She flashed him a sad smile. "Deep down, you know I'm right."

Did he?

Maybe.

She glanced at Effie. He expected the anger, the recriminations but she didn't look jealous or resentful. She looked… Well, she looked at peace.

"You're very tangled in the Slayer line, aren't you?" she sighed. "That's fate for you, I guess. Your fate has always been entwined to Snow's. Hers is tangled with yours. You'll need her. She's important." Her grey eyes traveled from the witch back to him. "Not just because of her magic. Don't be so afraid of your feelings. It's alright to lean on someone, to need them. To love them. You were so good at loving. So good at loving me. How did you forget that?"

He wiped the sweat from his brow. "I grew up."

"That's sad." she remarked. "For what it's worth, I like her. She's funny."

"She's funny." he agreed. And smart. And brave. And so fucking hot when she fought a vampire or a demon it was enough to give him a hard-on.

Mabel smiled as if she knew perfectly well what he was thinking and that made him uncomfortable. It was a little sad, that smile. Wistful maybe.

"I came to talk about Katniss." she said suddenly, as if remembering something.

He frowned. "What?"

"She needs to stay away from Snow." Mabel warned.

"Not really practical if we want to kill him." he pointed out.

She let out an annoyed sigh – the exact same sight she always breathed out when he tried to force her to wait and think it through before rushing into a fight. "For now, he is weak but her blood is the key. If he gets it, you will lose."

"Her blood is the key?" he repeated. There was something in there that made sense but his tired feverish brain couldn't figure it out. "What does that…"

"I love you." she cut him off. "Now and forever. And I know you love me but don't let that stop you from being happy. I'm dead. She's not. Burying your head in your ass doesn't suit you, Watcher."

"I told you…" he argued but stopped entirely when he felt tentative fingers coil around his wrist.

"Who… are you… talking to?"

He looked down at Effie.

Her eyelids were fluttering as if she was fighting to keep them open, her voice was raspy and rough from disuse but she was fucking awake and he forgot everything else.

"Sweetheart… You scared me to death." he whispered, the lump in his throat making him choke. "Prim! Prim!" Effie winced at his screaming. She tried to lick her lips but she must have been parched because she smacked them together a few times instead. He cupped her cheek in his shaky hand. "I've got you, Princess. I've got you."

Prim came barging into the bedroom, in her PJs but completely alert. "Are you okay?" Her gaze fell on Effie who had rolled to her side and she squealed in joy. "Effie!"

Effie groaned again and buried her face half in Haymitch's arm and half in the pillow.

"She needs something to eat." he told the girl. "Liquid. Broth or something. Please."

He added the last part belatedly but the girl had already rushed off.

"Nightmare…" his witch mumbled, curling up a little. She winced, which must mean she was in pain somewhere…

"It's over." he promised. "You're okay."

She didn't seem entirely lucid, a lot less than he was anyway and he was hallucinating…

He glanced at the foot of the bed but Mabel was gone.

Hallucination or ghost?

Her blood is the key. If he gets it, you will lose.

Prim ran back into the room with a bowl carefully cradled between her hands. It hadn't been that long, had it?

"I made myself chicken soup." the girl explained. "I took out the noodles. You think she can drink it? She needs water at the very least…"

He reached for the bowl and then stopped himself because there was no way he could hold a bowl or a spoon. "You're gonna have to do it." He crawled away to the foot of the bed to leave her room but didn't stop there. He dragged himself to the old armchair under the window. He didn't want to be too close to Prim just in case.

He would kill himself before he accidentally hurt that kid.

Effie whined and moved her head aside when Prim tried to feed her the soup. It took some gentle coaxing on the girl's part before the witch either gave up out of exhaustion or consented to cooperate. The spoon feeding was a slow and painful process.

The bowl was still half full when Effie finally refused to have any more.

"Go back to sleep…" Prim encouraged. "You need to rest and get your strength back."

"Haymitch…" she muttered.

"Here." he promised. His head was so heavy… He rested it against the back of the armchair. "Right here, sweetheart."

"Nightmare…" she mumbled again.

"It's alright." Prim murmured, gently petting her hair. She started humming a lullaby and, slowly, Effie seemed to settle down. After a few minutes, the girl looked up at him. "She's asleep."

"Good." he mumbled because he wasn't far from that himself. "Katniss's back?"

"Not yet." The girl shook her head. "But it's still early enough."

"Peeta?" he asked next, forcing his rebellious brain to cooperate.

"No change." She sounded worried. "He hasn't woken up yet."

That was potentially concerning. He would give it the night. If the kid wasn't awake by morning… A general trip to the ER might be in order. For the boy, Effie, maybe himself…

"You should go to bed." he said. He doubted school would open the next day given what had happened that afternoon but… Still…

Prim immediately shook his head, hugging herself. "I'm scared."

He frowned. "You're safe inside."

"I'm scared of having nightmares." she admitted.

"Ah…" He could understand that only too well. "Sleep with Effie… I'll be here if you've got a nightmare, sweetheart."

"But… You need to lie down too…" she pointed out.

He waved his hand. "I'm good here."

The armchair wasn't that bad once he curled up on it.

He wouldn't be more comfortable anywhere else anyway.

There was no getting comfortable with the state he was in.

Hallucination or nightmare? Seems like either way Mabel ships it :p And Effie woke up! Did you like this chapter? Let me know your thoughts!