A/N: This is a trigger warning for mentions of underage pregnancy and death of a child. It's a dark chapter, to be honest. Sorry!
**73rd Annual Hunger Games**
Chaff is still in Gamemaker detention after being too drunk to interview about his boy's miraculous survival during a fight with a Career, that ended with the Career falling from the roof of a tall building, leaving only three tributes in the arena. The finale would be coming any minute. It didn't matter to Haymitch though. His kids had been dead a while.
Haymitch feels at a bit of a loss this year. He's having a hard time being alone after meeting Cinna. He's sitting in the garden on the roof, watching the city, wishing for company, but not quite up to running into Effie.
Someone approaches and he turns slightly on the bench, to see Johanna. She's smirking, like finding him up here is the best joke she's heard in days. He turns back to the city view.
"What are you doing up here? Drunk suicide?"
Haymitch shrugs.
"Have to be drunk for that."
"Then let's get out of here."
Haymitch stands up.
"Let's go."
He follows her out of the Training Center, then takes them both to a bar he knows. The Capitol citizens who congregate there are mostly working class. There will be a live feed of the Games, and a betting bar that will be busy this late in the Games, but there's a patio out back, lit and heated by metal disks filled with fiery coals, where people rarely sit, and has no screen.
Johanna looks around appreciatively when they bring their drinks out on the patio.
"Guess you get to know the city pretty well after 25 years."
"23," he says, and sits down at a table that gives him full view of the back door of the bar. There's a large fence surrounding the patio, but it would be simple to step up on a table and hoist yourself over the fence, should the need arise.
Johanna looks critically at the fence.
"Redwood," she says, smirking again. "You know, our houses in Seven are made of pulp wood? Untreated pulp wood, all stuck together like cardboard. Every house is full of mold, and there's no insulation, so the walls let in all the weather. Everyone gets sick every winter."
Haymitch takes a big gulp of his drink, and fills up his glass with the vodka from his flask.
"And in your Victors' Village?"
Johanna scoffs.
"Oak. Beautiful."
She finishes her drink, so Haymitch offers his flask. She nods, and pushes her glass toward him.
"What about 12?"
Haymitch shakes his head, pushes her full glass back across the table to her.
"One wood looks the same as another to me. Our houses are covered in coal dust. Any stray spark could mean extinction for more than half the town."
Johanna nods.
"And your Victors' Village?"
"Brick. Beautiful. Even the air is clear."
He goes inside, brings them both another round. They don't talk much. Just drink. He likes that.
Haymitch has always felt uneasy around Johanna. He supposes she's the new him, the warning to victors who don't fall in line. It does something to him, something he doesn't like, their knowing each other's most intimate pain – the unknowable grief of having murdered everyone you love with your own arrogance and naivete.
"I can't look at this fence," says Johanna, slurring her words, sometime later. "Let's go somewhere else."
Haymitch doesn't mind. He follows her to another bar, a little nicer, and clearly a place they know her.
"No!" yells the bartender, when he sees Johanna. "No, no, no. You cannot come in here."
Johanna throws her arms out to the side.
"Claudius," she says, in a tone that implies her feelings have been hurt, "Are you really saying," she raises her voice, "That victors aren't welcome in your bar?"
Claudius turns red, and looks quickly around the bar. His patrons have all stopped talking, and are watching the exchange with interest.
Finally, Claudius points at Johanna, and says sternly, "No throwing knives."
Haymitch chuckles.
Johanna shakes her head, but she's laughing.
"I promise. No knife throwing."
"Or forks, or anything!"
She and Haymitch order their drinks and sit in a corner. After five or ten minutes, the other people in the bar go back to their own conversations, and stop staring at them.
Haymitch is in that pleasant place where he's not drunk yet, but he's far from sober.
They get into an animated discussion about survival tactics. They agree evasion is best as the Careers take out most of the competition, but they differ on when to enter the fray. People are looking at them again.
It's not until they start toasting each other that they get kicked out.
"To Haymitch Abernathy! The only tribute to win with sarcasm!"
He's laughing.
"To Johanna Mason, the only victor to win with her brains!"
She slaps the table, and downs her drink. Then she raises the empty glass, looks at it, and sees that it's empty. She reaches behind her, graceful, though she must be as plastered as he is, and takes their neighbor's drink right out of his hand.
"To the only man I know whose whole family is dead!"
He clinks their glasses.
"To the only person I know who outlived everyone she loves!"
"To family murder!"
Claudius is coming over. They both finish their drinks and run out of the bar.
Johanna is laughing wildly.
"I want a steak!"
Haymitch laughs. They stumble around the wet, darkened streets, trying to find a restaurant that will serve them. They find a hot dog stand, and sit on the edge of a nearby fountain. The lights in the water shift from green to purple to pink, and the water gushing out of it is pretty loud.
"Snow didn't kill my whole family," Johanna says, and takes a bite of her hot dog. She chews thoughtfully, then says, with her mouth full, "I mean, he did. But not like he thought."
Haymitch doesn't reply. He waits for her to say it.
She was 14. Like him and Terra. She thought she was in love.
Even the Capitol seems to understand some sacred idea of life. A potential tribute who gets pregnant doesn't often live long, and if they somehow live long enough to have a baby, they have very short lifespans, even for the districts.
"My parents said I had the mumps. Peacekeepers didn't want to check, and my sister dropped out of school to keep up with the quota, so no one thought too much about it."
She eats some more of her hot dog.
"I only held her once. She was perfect. Looked just like my brother when he was born.
"A family agreed to take her in. The mom had pretended to be pregnant, putting bags full of sawdust in her dress till the baby was born. I never got to feed her, or sing to her. Just hold her once. I looked into her eyes and I knew she knew me.
"I never talked to her. Barely even looked at her. I was afraid she would know me. But I would sometimes walk by their house, anyway. Just to see her.
"After Snow killed my family, I started saying, 'There's no one left that I love.' It killed me, you know?" She's not crying, but her eyes are wet. Haymitch wonders how long it's been since she talked about this. "But I had one more person to protect."
"What happened to her?"
"She got pneumonia." She looks at Haymitch, then back down at the last bite of hot dog, which she can't seem to bring herself to eat. "It ripped through the town. I wasn't even there when she…" Then she breaks down into tears.
Haymitch sets down his hot dog carton on the side of the fountain, and holds her hand. He doesn't say anything. What could he possibly say that would make this pain any better? He's amazed at her resilience, as much as her ability to keep a secret from Snow. He continues to hold her hand, as he thinks about all the victors working on the rebellion, making contacts. He wonders if Finnick has talked to Johanna about it yet. Maybe there is something he can say.