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Day Three

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When the knock comes at the door on the morning of the third day of Effie's visit, Haymitch is surprised to open it and see Jo, the quiet young mother from the town who he pays to come by and clean his house once a week. He squints at her sleepily. "Is it your day?"

She shakes her head. "Peeta sent for me. He said his guest wants to come see your house and that I needed to make it presentable."

Haymitch hangs his head and groans, but he steps aside and lets Jo come in. She heads straight for her broom closet and he stumbles upstairs to get ready to receive guests. A shower helps clear his head, and then he dresses, frowning at the small pile of clean clothes he has left—better tell Jo to send out his washing. He doesn't much mind wearing the same clothing a few days in a row, but he knows that the washerwoman can use the money, and since he has it to spare, he dutifully sends out his clothes to get cleaned regularly. It's the least a victor can do for his adoring district, he sometimes thinks with a bitter smile. For twenty-five years, that was one of the only ways he could think of to help 12: buy lots of food, buy lots of booze, try and get some of his winnings back out into the local economy.

Jo finishes and slips out the door, a bag of laundry slung over her shoulder, just a few minutes before the next knock comes at his door: Peeta, Katniss and Effie, of course, who looks quite beautiful in a gray dress and jacket and far too cheerful for this time of morning. "This has always been such a lovely house," she gushes, even though from the outside they all basically look the same. Then she pauses, taking him in, and he suddenly feels uncomfortable because the only clothes that Jo didn't cart off to the washerwoman's house were all more formal than he prefers—things left over from his tours of the Capitol, not things he'd normally wear here in 12—but he's stuck wearing them. "And you look so handsome," she says, and she sounds so perfectly sincere that it makes him squirm.

"Well, come in," he says, so that Katniss will stop eyeing his fine clothes and giving him approving (and facetious) nods.

This isn't the first time Effie has seen his house, of course; she stopped by a few times back before the war to get him ready for reapings and the like. But this is the first time she's seen his house clean.

And it's nothing to write home about. For starters, his house is nothing like as nice as Peeta's. The layout is the same, but Peeta, as a more recent victor, has newer furniture. More to the point, Peeta's is full of homey touches—paintings, mostly, and knickknacks of a personal nature—that make it feel much more inviting and cared for. Katniss's house, which he knows Effie has also seen on this visit, was bare for a long time—after the war ended, she carefully packed away most things that reminded her of Prim and sent most of her mother's things to her—but Peeta has been slowly filling it with his art and with things he gives her. But Haymitch has never done one thing with his house. Jo's hard work clears away all the alcohol bottles, but this strips the house of the one thing that gives it any sense of personality. When the house is clean, it is barren: no indication of who might live there.

But Effie, being Effie, focuses on the positive. "It's so tidy in here," she says, and he supposes she's remembering that the last time she set foot in this house, she nearly twisted her ankle by trying to step over and between all the discarded bottles in her impractical heels. Oh boy, that day was hilarious. "Very open and airy."

He looks around the bland living room with mock pride. "I like to think it's almost like Peeta's house, only less nice-looking."

"I know a great decorator," she says eagerly. "Young man in the capitol named Marcus. Absolute genius. Maybe he could . . ." She trails off as she sees him raise his eyebrows. "But you're not likely to hire an interior decorator to come all the way out to 12 just to make your living room look nicer," she guesses.

"Exactly," he says. But then he remembers his part of the bargain: if she stops saying crazy Capitol stuff, he'll stop being rude. So he adds, with only a hint of exaggerated politeness, "But thank you for the recommendation."

Behind Effie, Katniss and Peeta share a look.

Then, since it seems to be why Effie showed up, he shows her the rest of the house, starting with the kitchen and finishing with the second floor: his room right at the top of the stairs, because he feels a compulsive need to sleep as close as possible to the nearest exit, and then an office that is rarely used, and then a row of bedrooms that no one ever goes into except when Jo is dusting them. Then, out of things to see inside, they go out to see the enclosure where he keeps his geese.

"Oh, aren't they charming," Effie says.

Haymitch doesn't think they're charming. Haymitch thinks they're opinionated and sassy—which, coming from him, is a compliment—when he's in a good mood. When he's in a bad mood, he thinks they're obnoxious and noisy. But he nods anyway.

Effie is standing at least six feet from the fence, and her expression is cautious. "Will they . . . will they bite? Or attack? If I get closer?"

"They might."

She frowns. "I can't tell if you're just saying that to tease," she says.

In return he shrugs. "Me neither."

Behind them Peeta laughs. "All right, you two," he chuckles. "I need to get back and finish up lunch. Meet me back there at noon?"

"I'll go with you," Katniss says, and Haymitch isn't sure if it's because she wants to spend time with Peeta or because she's always disliked his geese.

"See you soon!" Effie trills, and Katniss and Peeta leave.

"So," Effie says, turning back to Haymitch, "geese."

"Geese," he agrees. He's not that keen to stand here and chat about his geese, not when just the sound of Effie's voice still stirs a vague sense of unease at the back of his mind, but he did promise to try.

"Any reason?"

"Something to do," he says honestly.

"Things are that dull here?"

He shrugs. "We don't work, although Peeta thinks we should start again. We each still have a fair bit of money left over from our winnings, and we live on that. I get bored." He glances over at the pen. "Maybe I'll become a real goose farmer when the money runs out."

She's nodding when something suddenly catches her eye and she stares. "There's smoke coming from that chimney," she says, pointing to the house next to his.

Why is that noteworthy? "Yeah."

"Someone lives there?"

"Yeah."

"But—" She looks perplexed. "But it's for victors."

He blinks at her a few times, and then he touches his nose. She stares at him for a moment, and then her eyes fill with understanding. "That was silly."

"A little," he says.

"Because District 12 only has three living victors."

He nods. "And because with most of the district destroyed and all these people without homes, we had to stick people somewhere."

She colors a little. "I see now that I might sometimes speak before I think."

But her contrition makes him feel like more of a jerk, because speaking without thinking is basically his greatest talent, and it's silly to let Effie beat herself up over something he does all the time. So he shakes his head. "We all do, princess." Then, not wanting to dwell on the fact that he just actually comforted Effie, of all people, he says conversationally, "These houses are where the first people who returned to 12 lived. They were the only thing standing after Snow bombed the district."

A shadow passes over her face, and she turns and looks around. "So this is it? This is the whole district?"

"We're rebuilding," he shrugs. Well, other people are rebuilding while he sits around and drinks. "But only a handful of buildings are finished. So right now, almost the whole district lives in these twelve houses." He pauses. "'Course, the whole district is only a hundred and thirty people right now."

She blinks. "A hundred and thirty people live in these twelve houses?"

"About ninety," he corrects. "Some people have moved into new houses by now. That place right there?" He motions to a mansion across the way. "Four families live there right now."

Effie looks shocked. "Four families in a single home?"

He shrugs. "Yeah, but the houses they lived in before—all four of them together could have fit on the ground floor of one of these houses. This is a step up for them."

Effie stares out at the Victors' Village, where the quiet, dignified facades conceal nearly an entire district of people. And then her gaze turns to Haymitch's own house, and in a strange moment of mental unity with her, he knows what she's going to ask before she asks it.

"So four families live in one house, and you get this house to yourself," she says. "And Peeta and Katniss as well. Doesn't that seem a poor use of space?"

A bitter half-smile twists his face. "No one's willing to live with us. Peeta and Katniss are still as likely as not to have a flashback or a nightmare and take somebody's head off."

"And you?"

"Same reason, plus no one wants to live with a filthy old drunk."

Her face softens. "You don't have to be an old drunk, you know," she says. "There are treatment centers for this kind of thing. I know the director of an excellent one in the Capitol. Best in the country."

He shrugs and gives her a fake apologetic smile. "No can do. They say the first step is you have to want to stop, and I, princess, do not want to stop."

She rolls her eyes at him. "Haymitch Abernathy, you are incorrigible."

And then she looks out again at the Victors' Village, and then turns her head in the direction of the remnants of the town. "Haymitch," she says, and her expression is slightly pained, "after lunch, I want to see the rest of the district."

. . . . . .

Peeta is concerned about the idea, of course; he wanted to keep Effie's visit pleasant and fun, and had accordingly planned to spend the afternoon teaching her how to paint. The remains of the district are, at present, distinctly not pleasant or fun. But Effie has made up her mind, and as they all learned time and again back in the Hunger Games days, she is good at getting her way. Haymitch is not sure where this is coming from—she was never that interested in District 12 when it was whole and functional—but she seems to think it's important.

So after lunch, the four of them take the path from the Victors' Village to the old heart of District 12. He knows Katniss and Peeta come down here often, but he hasn't visited for several months, preferring to send Jo or Greasy Sae when he needs something fetched from the train or the few functioning businesses in town.

It has improved since the last time he saw it. They've finally put out for good the mine fires started by the firebombing, which is an impressive feat—though they'd never had such a fire in anyone's memory, he knows from stories passed down through generations of miners that in the old days, mine fires could burn for decades. Thank goodness for modern technology. The ash and the rubble and the bones and the corpses have all been cleared away—he's heard from Katniss that they've buried everyone at the Meadow—revealing the paved roads in the center of town that are the only things, besides the Village and the train station way on the edge of town, that survived the bombing. And there are new buildings slowly growing up from the bare ground: a handful of houses, including the one that Jo and her husband and their large young family live in, with fields stretching out behind them where they plan to plant crops next year; the collection of lean-tos that currently act as the school; and in a field at the edge of the town, the beginnings of what will become the medicine factory. The announcement of that factory was the first stroke of luck they'd had in 12; the promise of jobs will bring more refugees back to their ancestral home, and maybe transplants from other places, and it will boost the economy.

Peeta is explaining all this to Effie, who is listening with interest, while beside him Katniss is grimacing a little. Haymitch supposes she's thinking about the people she knew who lived and died in each of these spots. For his part, Haymitch feels little. The relationship between a victor and his district was always a complicated one, at least among those districts that hated the Games—he knows this from his own experiences and those of his victor friends. There were always people in the district, friends and family of your companion tribute, who resented the fact that you returned and the other tribute didn't. And even for those who didn't have that hang-up, there was always a mild tension there: you were from the district, but you also had the taint of the Capitol on you, for as long as you lived; you were still a symbol of the Games, no matter how reluctantly you went to them. The victors were generally liked by their districts, certainly. But outside of family and close friends, those victors never truly belonged again. In Haymitch's case, this distance, plus the fact that his family was killed by Snow and he was terrified that anyone else he got close to would suffer the same fate, kept him from ever rejoining daily life in 12; far easier to be a hermit and a drunk. So the destruction of the district feels more like something he read about in a book or heard on the television: an undeniable tragedy, but something that happened to other people, not him.

Finally they reach the square, where only the vast expanse of paving stones indicates that this was once the bustling center of District 12. On the place where the Justice Building once stood is a hastily constructed wooden building, only one floor with two rooms, that acts as the administrative center of the district. Past that building is acres of empty ground, finally disappearing into forest. Haymitch can nearly see to the train station, as all the buildings that used to stand between it and and square are long gone, but it's just hidden behind the edge of a hill. Around the edge of the square, where the rows of shops and homes of the district's elite used to stand, are a handful of finished and half-finished buildings, which Peeta points out one by one: the homes of the district's temporary administrator, a former coal miner named Rowan, and of the stationmaster; the trading post where Katniss's old neighbor Leevy and her new husband Simon sell goods from the Capitol but also distribute the food parcels that 12 will receive from the Capitol's stores until the district gets its feet back under it; the shop where Delly Cartwright and a handful of other women make clothes and shoes. Effie, unsurprisingly, wants to check out their shop—"Imagine having something made in the actual districts! I would be all the rage back in the Capitol!"—but is distracted by Peeta pointing at the bare ground next to Delly's shop.

"I've been talking to Rowan about the possibility of opening a bakery right there."

This is the first Haymitch has heard of this idea, although from Katniss's look he can tell she's heard this plan before and approves of it. He's not sure who's going to have the money to buy bread, at least not until the factory opens, but it's still a smart move; Peeta's happiest when he's baking or painting, and opening a bakery seems like a sure way to keep the boy stable. "I think that's a great idea," he says honestly.

"It would be perfect for you," Effie says warmly.

Peeta smiles at them both. "Rowan asked if I wanted my parents' old location," he says, gesturing across the square to where that building used to stand, "but I'd rather leave that behind me."

"Your parents' old location?" Effie repeats, sounding baffled. She looks at where he's pointing, then turns around in a full circle, staring at the empty space around them. "Are we—are we in your public square?"

Haymitch supposes they never did explain to her exactly where they were, and to someone who only saw this area for a few minutes once a year, it'd be hard to identify without any of the buildings around it. "Drink it in," he says, gesturing out at the emptiness and the ramshackle new buildings.

"Yeah, this is it," Katniss says. She points at the administration building. "That's where the Justice Building used to be."

"I—I didn't realize. I didn't even recognize it." She hesitates. "When I heard 12 had been destroyed, I didn't realize . . . how thoroughly . . . when we came in on the train, I thought they'd . . ." She looks around a few more moments, and then she walks very slowly toward the administration building. Katniss and Peeta glance at each other, then follow. And Haymitch, not wanting to be left standing alone and bored in the middle of the square, comes after.

Effie moves to where the paving stones of the square stop; just past it, the foundations of the old Justice Building are just visible above the dirt. Then she pauses, then turns to face the rest of the square. The other three catch up with her then, and Haymitch finally realizes what she's doing: she is standing where the stage used to stand on reaping days, where she stood six times to draw the names of tributes.

Peeta and Katniss follow suit, standing beside her and looking out over the empty square, perhaps remembering the two times they stood on that stage as well. Whatever's going through Katniss's head, it makes her flinch and then take in a deep steadying breath. Peeta's expression is equally pained, but he reaches out and takes her hand, gripping it tightly, which seems to help them both relax a little. And then Effie, standing on Katniss's other side, takes her other hand, and Haymitch sees the girl's expression lighten, just a little. They're all three wearing their pins, he notices for the first time, and he rolls his eyes a little but he can't hide a smile.

And then curiosity overtakes him and he wonders what the three of them see standing there, what memories this spot invokes. So he joins them on their imaginary stage, and as soon as he's up there, on Effie's other side, she reaches out and grabs his hand as well. Not really what he'd intended by coming over here, and he rolls his eyes again, but he lets her keep hold of his hand.

And he sees why they all look so affected; just standing in this spot, looking out at the familiar expanse of the square, brings memories rushing back to him of twenty-five years of reapings, of fear and despair and hopelessness and resignation. It's suffocating, and without meaning to, he tightens his grip on Effie's hand.

"I'm sorry," she says softly, her gaze fixed out over the buildings that no longer exist. "Your entire district, gone—I'm so sorry."

A bitter smile twists his lips. "That's not the only terrible thing Snow ever did to us," he says. "You ought to remember; you were here for the last six."

She looks over at him then, and there are tears glittering in her eyes. "I know," she says softly. "And I'm sorry for that too."

And their little team stands, hand in hand, reliving those dark days.

. . . . . .