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Chapter 1 :

Haymitch couldn't get the girl out of his mind.

He kept himself busy all morning by bringing in all the wood he could from the shed and making a lazy inventory of the food left in the house yet he couldn't shake away the memory of her frightened blue eyes.

She was weaponless now and she was so obviously not prepared to tackle Twelve's winter… He kept an eye out when he went down to the Hob, in the afternoon, but if she was anywhere in the victors' village, she was hiding very well. No tracks, no noise. He left one of his knives on a flat stone next to the entrance – a hunting knife, not the scabby blade she had been using – he had plenty of those, anyway.

The Hob was as busy as it always was, snow or not. He bought enough bottles of liquor from Ripper to last a few days and made his way to the grocer's shop in upper town. He was just about to go back home when he passed Cray, the Head Peacekeeper, and a squad of four or five men. Unusual.

"Haymitch." Cray greeted him more cordially than Haymitch thought strictly necessary. They weren't friends by any means. If nobody liked him, everybody hated Cray. The Head Peacekeeper might tolerate poaching and be one of Ripper's best customer but his habits of soliciting prostitution from every desperate starving girl of the Seam was well-known and well despised. Twelve could do worse than Cray, though. Haymitch had seen worse in other Districts during his Victory Tour. "Are you coming from the Hob?"

"Yes." No point in lying to Cray. If he were to arrest people who practiced black market, he would have to put all his Peacekeepers into jail first.

"Nothing to report?"

"Greasy Sae put rats in her soup today, I would avoid it if I were you." Strange question to ask. "What's going on with them?" He nodded to the group of Peacekeepers waiting further down the road for their leader.

Cray waved his question away. "You know, just… patrolling."

Peacekeepers, in Twelve, were too lazy to patrol. They never did that at random. Never. It would have been a huge coincidence for them to start the very day he found a stranger in his bed. Haymitch, unfortunately, didn't believe in coincidences.

"Come on, Cray, not to me…" he smirked. "What are you looking for?"

The Head Peacekeeper hesitated a few seconds and then barked out a laugh. "You know me too well. We're not supposed to tell anyone but it won't come to anything anyway. We're looking for a woman."

Of course they were.

"A woman?" He was careful to sound curious but not interested. "Aren't you always looking for a woman?"

Cray laughed some more at his mediocre joke. He wasn't the brightest bulb but that served Haymitch's purposes more often than not. "This one's special. She's from the Capitol."

Coincidences?, a little voice snorted in his mind, there were no such things. Karma, on the other hand…

"You didn't see a Capitol woman walking around the Hob, did you?" the Head Peacekeeper asked with obvious amusement.

"No, I can't say that I have." Haymitch forced himself to chuckle. "She shouldn't be hard to spot though…"

"Oh, I don't know…" Cray rolled his eyes. "You didn't hear it from me but, word is, she led them on a merry chase. They can't find her in the Capitol so they asked us to keep an eye open for her in the Districts. I don't see how she could make it that far on her own, though. And what would she come to Twelve for anyway?"

"Go figure." Haymitch shrugged. "Greasy Sae's famous soup maybe." The thought of any Capitol presented with a rat meat stew was hilarious for some reason and made him smirk wider. "What do they want her for?"

Cray's face became serious once again, closed. "They didn't explain anything. But they're desperate to find her if you know what I mean. Shame."

"Shame." he agreed.

He did know what the man meant. She would be executed before the cuffs were even properly secured around her wrists.

"Well, I hope for her sake she's not out there." Cray said, signaling to his men to keep going. "It's going to get freezing, tonight."

He watched thoughtfully the man leave with his squad before heading back to his house. Cray was a foul man but he was right on one thing : the temperature was going to drop lower. The snow had piled up another inch while he was out and the hike back to the victors' village was a real struggle – he kept swallowing mouthfuls of liquor to keep the chills at bay but it wasn't working all that well.

His knife wasn't where he had left it anymore, which was good. Great, even. He didn't have to feel guilty now, she was armed again and she could obviously hold her own if the Capitol was so anxious to find her. They would eventually, of course. They always did. And even if she had been clever enough to avoid being captured until then, where would she go from Twelve? She was at the end of the line. There was nothing beyond their District but wilderness.

He reached his house just when the blizzard started. He mechanically lighted a fire before checking each and every room for hypothetical broken windows – or mysterious blonde fugitives – but there was nothing wrong or unexpected in there. Where did she go?, he wondered. The logical answer was in any other house of the village – that's what he would have done at least. But it wouldn't help her much if she couldn't start a fire… And she wouldn't, he knew, because she was smart. She must have figured out that there was only one victor in the village and that two smoking chimneys would draw attention.

She wasn't his problem, though. He had offered his help and she had rejected it. Granted, she was terrified at the time and she had absolutely no reason to trust him, but… But nothing, he told himself angrily. In what amount of problems would he find himself in when people would finally capture her only to learn he had been helping her? An awful lot, that was how much. They would never execute a victor for treason but they could make his life more of a living hell than it already was. She wasn't his bloody problem.

She wasn't his problem and that was why he blamed the half-bottle of liquor he drank while pondering the issue when he found himself almost knees deep in snow, a flashlight in his hand, exploring the neighboring streets. He went into a few houses but despite his best efforts, he couldn't find her. He gave up when the snowstorm got so bad he couldn't see beyond a few feet ahead. It was easy to get lost like that, all the more so when you were more drunk than sober. He left a blanket and some food on the back door porch anyway, just in case.

He couldn't have explained why he bothered if anyone had asked.

He turned the television on – something he never did if he could help it – hoping to learn more about her but there was nothing of interest on the news. On retrospect, that wasn't all that surprising. So he ended up on the couch, as he did most nights, slowly drinking the time away. He fell asleep at some point only to wake up to a world of white. The storm had lifted a little, the wind had died down, but large snowflakes were still falling from the sky.

The blanket and the food weren't where he had left them.

He tried again to search some of the houses for her but it was obvious he wouldn't find her while she didn't want to be found. He had done the best he could. That was what he kept telling his conscience when the storm picked up again in the late afternoon. That night would be even colder than the previous one, he wasn't sure she would make it out there on her own.

He settled on the couch again, nursing his drink. The wind was blowing so hard the whole house seemed to be shaking. He poked the fire regularly, careful not to let it die. It would be a difficult night for people in the Seam, he mused.

He was adding another log to the fire when he heard it : the small shuffling of feet.

"Look what the cat dragged in." he drawled, slowly turning away from the flames. Sure enough, she was there, his mysterious squatter, wrapped in his blanket and covered in snow, shivering on the doorway to the living room.

"I knocked." Her teeth were chattering with cold.

"Well, that's a first for you." he joked, sitting on the chair closest to the fire. "Come closer before you freeze to death."

She hesitated a bit but she must have decided that he wasn't a threat – or maybe she fancied the fire more than she was afraid of him – because she did hobble closer. Her limp was more pronounced than the last time he had seen her. She was damp with snow, her clothes clung to her body like a second skin and her hair were stuck to her face. The bruise seemed to have faded a little, though.

"I will get you dry clothes." he said. She didn't even answer, she just kind of slumped on the ground and crawled as close to the fireplace as she dared. "Don't burn yourself." It didn't take him long to come back with one of his less ragged shirt and pants he thought should fit her. "I will be in the kitchen." – which was something he had never said before.

He heated up some soup leftovers, making sure she had plenty of time to get changed. When he came back with two bowls, she was wearing his brown flannel shirt and his grey pants. The blue shirt she had "borrowed" before was neatly hung on the back of a chair, the rest of her clothes had been flung more carelessly on another one. She was still sitting next to the fireplace, her left leg stretched out in front of her, she was hugging her right one close to her chest.

She thanked him softly when he handed her the bowl of soup, warming her hands on the faience. "Why are you helping me?"

That was a perfectly valid question. Unfortunately, he didn't have any answer, so he started eating. "Dig in before it gets cold."

She stared at him warily for a few minutes but when he said nothing and kept swallowing his broth, she started sipping the soup. If sipping was the right word to describe what she was doing. She clang the spoon against the side of the bowl each time to make sure it wasn't about to spill, then she blew on it before delicately sucking up the soup. She ate that broth like it was a sumptuous dish. It was such a Capitol thing to do, despite her obvious hunger, he was tempted to laugh. He refrained because it was actually more pathetic than it was funny.

She carefully put her empty bowl on the floor, wincing a little when she leaned on her arm. At least, she wasn't shivering anymore.

"So, Princess…" No point beating around the bush. "I don't have to tell you Peacekeepers are looking for you…"

"Here?" Her face was a mask of pure terror.

"Everywhere, apparently." He leaned back on the chair to watch her. "Which brings the question… What did you do to make the Capitol that angry with you, kid?"

"I'm nineteen and you are hardly older than me." she snapped "Don't be obnoxious."

"Yeah, I don't know what that means but I'm guessing it's not nice." he scoffed, more amused than annoyed. He ignored her glare and suppressed a smirk. He liked her. That was bad. "So? Why are you on Snow's most wanted list?"

She seemed to shrink back on herself. She flicked her damp hair out of her face and hugged herself. "I am grateful for your help and I am sorry I stole from you before, that wasn't very proper. You've been very kind and comprehensive but I can't trust a stranger and I…"

"Okay." he cut her off, raising a hand to stop her ramblings. "First, I think propriety is the last thing you should worry about. Second… Trust has to start somewhere. What's your name?"

He couldn't keep on calling her mystery girl forever…

"What's yours?" she shot back, a little too aggressively. She immediately bit her bottom lip. "I apologize."

"Haymitch." he replied, waving her excuses away.

Her eyes widened slightly. "Abernathy. Victor of the fiftieth Hunger Games…"

There was amazement in her voice or admiration perhaps. "Look at that… Wouldn't have pegged you for a fan, sweetheart."

"I rooted for you during the Quell." She blushed and it was such a girlish thing to do he was taken aback. "I should have realized who you were earlier."

"I will forgive you if you tell me your name." His forgiveness obviously wasn't worth that much because she only crept closer to the flames, so close, to say the truth, that he was a bit afraid she would light herself on fire. "Careful. I don't fancy watching you burn alive, sweetheart." he warned. "Let's try an easier question. Where are you hurt? Face, leg, what else?" He was betting on the arm or the shoulder, she kept favoring one to the other.

"My… back." She said, at last. "I think I have a cut but I can't reach it. It keeps bleeding."

Wonderful. She was going to bleed to death in his living-room. "I should take a look." He didn't move because he already knew she was going to freak out if he did.

"It's alright." She sounded less afraid now that she knew who he was. He wondered if it was because he truly had been her favorite during his Games and she felt he was familiar. Lots of Capitol citizens thought they knew him because of that… "It doesn't hurt too much. That's not the worst."

"What's the worst? The cheek?" The bruise looked pretty bad, even if it had faded to a dark grey-blue. It looked bad enough that the bone could be broken… "What did they use to do that kind of damage?"

She brushed her fingers against the bruise and winced. "A gun."

He wanted to ask if it had been a Peacekeeper and, above all, how she had managed to escape them for so long but he knew those were questions she wouldn't answer. "What about the leg?"

"My knee." she corrected him quietly, staring at her left leg with a wistful look. "I twisted it. It could have been worse."

Well, he couldn't dispute that… She was being hunted by Peacekeepers, she had run away to the Districts… It could have been worse. She could have been dead. Although, of course, death, sometimes, was preferable to other things in his opinion. "How did that happen?"

"I told you, I fell." She closed her eyes and leaned against the side of the fireplace. "Well… That's not entirely true. I didn't fall, I jumped."

"From high?" He blindly reached for a bottle and took a swing, unable to stop looking at her. She was something, that girl.

"It wasn't that high, but it was fast." She smiled that same sad bitter smile. "I'm so tired of running…"

"You can rest here for awhile, if you want to." It was a dumb offer. He was getting distracted by her blue eyes. "You're safe enough here, for now."

She hummed softly something that sounded like a thank you. It took him a minute to understand she had fallen asleep. He couldn't decently let her sleep on the floor, though.

He walked to her quietly, half-expecting her to bolt away from him, but she barely opened her eyes when he lifted her up. She was so light and felt so frail in his arms he almost got scared of breaking her. He set her down on the couch, noticing there was a bloody spot on the shirt, above her shoulder blade, but it was mostly dry and she didn't appear to be bleeding out so he let that be for the moment. Her skin, however, was cold to the touch. He piled a mountain of covers on her without her batting an eyelid. That was odd. She had been so on edge earlier…

Maybe she was as tired as she looked. She probably had been waiting for a safe place to crash for days… Or, she might just be a heavy sleeper…

He chose to stay in the armchair instead of going up to his bedroom. It didn't feel right, somehow, to leave her while she was sleeping. He drank a little but not too much. He didn't dare.

And that turned out to be the best decision he had ever taken.

When he opened his eyes – it might have been hours or minutes he couldn't say – she was whimpering in her sleep. The strained muttering was probably what had woken him up. She looked distressed and in pain so he walked to the couch, careful not to startle her – she still had his knife snatched somewhere on her after all. Her skin was clammy with perspiration. She had kicked the covers off at some point.

She was burning up and Haymitch had absolutely no idea what to do.