A/N: I know it's been almost a year since I've updated this story. Feel free to reread if you need to and don't forget to review and follow so you never miss what will hopefully be more frequent updates. I'll be able to write a lot at the end of this next term, towards the beginning of summer.

Anyways! I hope you like this chapter. I've been thinking about Haymitch a lot since I wrote a couple chapters of my very long fic Hands and Fire from his perspective. I wanna make sure I do his story justice, so please make sure to let me know if you find any inconsistencies with the books. I try to do as much research as possible but I sometimes can't find all of the clues at once!

Loves! ~B

This story contains mature topics regarding alcoholism, the effects of war, death, abuse, and attempted suicide.

I do not own any of Suzanne Collins' works or characters, and I am not a paid publisher of fanfiction.

We're going to skip completely over Districts Six and Seven for time constraints. Thanks for reading!

The sky outside the window is dark again. I don't remember falling asleep, but I suppose I wouldn't. I told Veridia I wasn't playing nice anymore. She'd left me alone since then, left me to the alcohol cabin and my thoughts and my bed. I couldn't remember the last time I'd slept so soundly than I did just now. It felt like no time had passed at all. Maybe hardly any had. I rise, my head swimming still. I couldn't have been asleep for long then. I wonder if anyone else is sleeping. My escort? The Avox who boarded this train on command? I close my eyes. But everytime I close my eyes I see Maysilee, and my heart aches. I want to stop this train, or jump off it. Anything to end what could only be seen as a torture campaign. From the inside, that's all it is. Torture. And I am screaming to be released.

When I wake up again, later, it's daylight. The train is slowing down as it pulls into Five, and I want to go to sleep again. I pull myself out of bed, stiff from sleeping poorly. My hands started to shake a few days ago and they haven't stopped. The booze car is only next door, and as I make my tired way into it, I'm stopped by one of the train guards. He's all grey, from his head to his slick, leather shoes. His face is covered by a grey, plastic screen; it's dark, I can't see through it, but I can feel his eyes on me.

"Move." I say, attempting to shove by him. He doesn't speak, just stares down at me, faceless, and doesn't move to either side to let me pass. "My god, I need to get through, MOVE!" I shove him, hard, and he steps sideways to catch himself.

"Haymitch." says a voice behind me. I whip around to see Veridia standing in the doorway to the sleeper car, one eyebrow raised. She doesn't have makeup on and her dark hair is falling in tendrils around her face. "We need to go now. You don't have time. And the bar car is off limits to you now." I stare at her, then turn back towards the bar car, slam my hand on the door button, and enter as the doors slide open then back shut behind me. There's no lock, so there's nothing preventing her from following me in. One of the Avox's stands behind the counter, looking sternly at me. He shakes his head when I walk up to the counter; I glare at him in response. We stand, eyes locked, in silence for a long moment. Finally, he reaches beneath the bar and pulls out a short glass. He drops an ice cube in it from next to him, turns, and grabs a bottle of deep amber liquid off the shelf. He casts me a look, rolls his eyes, then pours a liberal amount into the glass. He pats me on the back of the hand gently, then pushes the glass towards me. This Avox, a man I've come to rely on for silent company and patience in my trips to new places, makes a swift motion, which looks like 'drink'. I nod, then down the drink in one gulp, wincing as I slam the glass down on the counter with unnecessary force.

"Thank you," I say, grimacing. "Really. Thank you." I press my hand into his, which is still on the counter, and when Veridia walks in, arms crossed, unmade brow furrowed, I know what he's done.

"Haymitch."

"Yep. Got it. Thanks again." I turn away from the Avox, my heart pounding in my throat. He's going away and I will never see him again. He's going away, to the sewers of the Capital, or to the place where Avoxes who misbehave go. I will never see him again.

I will never see him again.

I will… never see him again.

This is the thought that beats through my head, the thought about this man, who was kind and generous and saw straight through me without words, ever, who broke rules for me, when I stand in front of the crowd of Five citizens who've gathered in the streets. I don't remember how I got here, I just know I did. I can hear Veridia in my head, her words beating like a tattoo against my skull, battling with my own thoughts.

"Selfish, Haymitch, that's what this is. The country of Panem relies on you, to be it's representatives. You're the reason we're even here in the first place. There's no other Victor. It's just you. Understand?" she pauses. "Are you even listening?"

I rattle off the usual drone that Veridia writes for me. It's pointless, this. I can barely see the audience. Whatever the Avox gave me, it was strong. I wobble side to side, even standing still. I can tell I'm barely intelligible as my words come tumbling out of my mouth. I reach the end of the card that was handed to me before I was roughly pulled out, to walk by myself, in a spotlight, to a microphone. The words stop coming, but I stand still, hearing a hum of slight applause. A Peacekeeper grabs my arm and drags me none too gently off the stage. I stumble into the back as the doors close behind me and the light from the brightly lit stage fades rapidly. I'm hyperventilating now, I can feel it, and I can also feel bile rising up my chest. I lean over and heave, throwing up all over the marble floor of Five's Justice Building, then pass out, shaking and coughing and gagging.

I awaken in a sterile room, the blinds around me closed. There's a cuff on one wrist and needles in the other. My vision is foggy, as if my eyes have suddenly gone bad. I wipe them with the hand that has the needles in it, and my vision clears. I see the plain white walls of a hospital, monitors beeping behind me. I'm sore, my throat burns like there's a fire roaring up it. I cough then suck in a wheezing breath. The sound of footsteps rushing towards me signals a sudden urge to feign sleep, but I keep my eyes open and wait for the worst.

Veridia throws open the blind, her eyes red but her face a terror. She's seething.

"Did I-" she huffs, barely recognizable through her flushed face and trembling voice. "Did I not- Haymitch, you are the worst Victor I have ever had the displeasure of meeting." She huffs and puff as her eyes well with tears. "I'm sorry I failed you." I shake my head a little as she comes bustling over to me, sitting on the edge of the bed, hand on my leg. She begins to weep, but no tears come. I wonder if she can actually cry. Maybe she had surgery to stop herself. I pull my leg away and turn away from her.

"Get me out of here. I'm fine." I mutter.

"You missed dinner," she says abruptly. "With the Mayor."

"I don't care." I reply. I'm seething now too. I'm angry and hurt and astonished that she could be so… stupid. "Don't you understand, don't you get it? By now you should, and the fact that you don't makes you more insane than I already thought you were." She looks taken aback, removes her hand from my ankle. "I don't care-" I repeat, my voice rising, "about ANY of this. This-" I gesture around, though a hospital room makes for a bad representation. "This doesn't matter. My family is dead." A sob rips through me. The first sob I've allowed myself to have since they died. It makes breathing hard. I can barely see. I can feel hands on me, and I fight them off, screaming, wailing.

My family is dead.

This is the thought I wake to and the thought I sleep by. It punishes me in the day, though the more drunk I am the easier it is to forget. When we get back on the train, Veridia does not station a new guard in front of the bar car, just gives me a hollow look and turns towards the dining car. I stand for a moment, shocked and overwhelmed. Then I turn, and make my way into the car that contains the sweet sensation of burning relief. When I enter, the Avox who served me before my speech in Five is gone, and for a moment I'm horrified. But the moment passes, and I'm left with that sick numbness that swallowed me from the second Maysilee died and my family died and everyone left.

Love hadn't ever been easy for me. It didn't come over me in the same way that it did for other people. James and his love for Maggie kills me. It feels unreal. James, my best friend, feels unreal. Separated from me. Everything does. Maysilee does now, too. But she'd been different, for a time. There was a moment when things weren't quite so bad. Even trapped inside the Capitol, they weren't quite so bad.

The air here is clean, but stagnant. It feels trapped in by the mountains surrounding it, though fast and hard gusts of wind carry people's dresses or coats away from their bodies in furious whippings of fabric. I stand on the roof here, unsure if I'm allowed to be up here. It's beautiful. The wind is so fast I can barely hear anything above the wind chimes that are hung, scattered almost, across the branches of trees or down below in shrubbery. I'm not sure why there's a garden up here. But I stand, feeling the wind whip around me and watching the people move below me like ants, calloused and cavalier and uncaring. I could try to jump, but something tells me I wouldn't be able to. I feel heavier up here, anyways. Maybe it's the height.

There's a tap on my shoulder and I jump, spinning around, assuming I'd been caught out, that I truly wasn't supposed to be up here. But it's… Maysilee. She's holding her hair back from her smiling face with one hand. She gestures for me to come closer in, then leans forward.

"It's beautiful up here." she whispers. My heart is racing. Are we being watched? They couldn't possibly hear us over the tattoo of sound that cascades from the wind chimes above us. "Why are you up here?" she continues, and she leans back, eyebrows raised. I shake my head and just smile at her. She's beautiful. Her blonde hair is thick and long and untamed. I don't know how she'd gotten away with it, but her prep team hadn't bothered it in the slightest, even during our irrefutably awful entrance. Her face is still streaked a little with black dust she wasn't able to get off, and her eyes are deeped by the liner going around them. She smiles wider and leans forward again. "Do you have a secret, Mitch?"

I cock my head to one side as she leans back, her smile turned smirk. She mouths the words 'I do' and leans forward again. "I have a bottle in my room that I stole off the train. I wanted to share it with you." My heart is beating a rapid fire pattern in my chest as she puts one hand on my wrist, gently. I follow her. The stairs are dark and it's quiet in here now. I miss the loud wind chimes. I miss the deafening howl of sound that would drown out any fear I had. Maysilee leads me to her room, closing and locking the door behind us. Some semblance of privacy. Nothing is private here. She sits on her bed, patting the space next to her before leaning into the nightstand and pulling out a smaller bottle of amber liquid. Its hue entrances me, and when she offers the first sip, I happily oblige. It's sweet, sort of, but the bitter nature of the drink takes over and makes it hard to swallow. I cough after I pull the handle, reminding myself of my father who, after long days in the mine, would pull out a bottle of the clear liquid they sold at the Hob and drink one down. The memory of him pains me and makes me take another long pull of the drink. I hand it back to Maysilee but don't meet her eyes as I do. She takes a few pulls, and we sit in a comfortable silence, each locked in our own thoughts.

"You're funny, Mitch." she finally says after a moment. We'd finished half the bottle before she put it away, not wanting to make us both too sick to train in the morning.

"Why's that?" I ask. I fall back onto her bed, looking at her with my hands over my head. She leans back then flops down next to me. She rolls over and places her head on my chest, her arm wound around my waist. I'm momentarily shocked, body stiffening, but after a second I relax into it.

"Because you've never been able to tell when people like you." Her face is very close to mine now, her eyes heavy with drink. She tilts her head into my hand as I press it into her hair. I bring her closer… closer.

When I wake up, it's light again. The memory of Maysilee against me retreats as I stand to shower. I haven't seen my prep team in a few days. Maybe they asked to be sent ahead. Maybe they asked to be relieved. We're visiting Two today. The home of the Tribute I killed. The home of the Tribute who made me Victor. Diamond's home.

A/N: I could keep going for pages and pages but I want to make sure I get updates to you as quickly as possible. I hope you enjoyed this chapter and if you did please review it! Follow so you never miss an updated and I'll talk to you all another day!