AN: In the course of writing this chapter, I had a lot of fun speculating about history in the series, especially how far in the future it's meant to be. At the time of this story, it's been about 77 years since the Dark Days, but we don't know much about the gap between the Dark Days and whatever apocalyptic event triggered the founding of Panem. For this story, I decided to assume that gap was a matter of decades, not centuries, so it's been somewhere between 100 and 125 years since the apocalyptic event and the end of America. (In actuality I've always assumed it was longer than that, because it seems like given names have had time to evolve—Peter to Peeta, Hamish to Haymitch, and so on—but it suited the story better this way. If you guys have any theories, I'd love to hear them.)
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Day Six
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Haymitch wakes up on his own on the sixth day of Effie's visit—and at 9:30 in the morning, which for him is hugely impressive. He doesn't let himself read much into the fact that he can't get back to sleep because there is something like adrenaline in his veins. He supposes that some might say it means that he's actually looking forward to the day, but that would be absurd. If it's anything, it's just self-preservation; he knows Peeta or Katniss will be by at some point to wake him up, and he might as well beat them to it because it's so much nicer to wake up on your own. Or maybe it's that the plan for today sounds interesting for once: Leevy's husband Simon was out hiking and apparently found the remains of an old town from back before the Dark Days, and they're all going to explore it. Haymitch has never seen a town that wasn't part of the Capitol or the districts, and the idea intrigues him. But those are absolutely the only reasons he's up and getting dressed by 10.
Jo returned his clean laundry yesterday, and now he has the entirety of his wardrobe at his disposal—no more need to wear his formal clothing, especially not for hiking. Only the thing is, when he looks at the clothes just back from the washerwoman's, he notices for the first time how shabby some of them are. Have they always been like this and he just hasn't noticed? Some of them are downright embarrassing. Of course, beggars can't be choosers; no one in District 12 has particularly nice clothing right now. And he's going hiking, so more casual clothes are to be expected. Still, he finds himself choosing one of his nicest pairs of District 12 pants and one of his more relaxed-looking Capitol shirts. He just doesn't want to look like a slob, is all.
Then he eats some breakfast and feeds his geese, and then he tidies up his kitchen because Jo won't be here until tomorrow and just in case he has any visitors, he'd like the place to look presentable. And then finally it's time to go to Peeta's.
"You're up," Katniss smiles when she answers the door. "I thought I'd have to come over and drag you out of bed."
"Geese woke me up," he lies as he walks past her and into the house.
"We're in here," Peeta calls from the kitchen, and Haymitch follows his voice in to see that Effie is helping Peeta prepare their picnic lunch for the day. She's in one of her more sturdy-looking outfits, some kind of gray jumpsuit with dark boots, and just for a moment he is forcibly reminded of his Aunt Ruth, who never married and who wore an outfit just like that as she worked in the mines to support herself until she died not long before his Games. She was 12 through and through, a woman who could absolutely take care of herself, and the reminder makes him smile a little. Effie wouldn't have lasted a day in the mines, but surviving Snow's torture, refusing to take Haymitch's crap for six years . . . in some ways, the woman is a lot like Aunt Ruth.
"We'll be ready in a second," Peeta says, breaking Haymitch from his reverie. "Just finishing lunch. And Simon and Leevy should be here any minute."
"Oh." Effie blinks a few times, looking surprised. "Simon and Leevy are coming? I didn't realize—I thought they'd just told you where to go." At Peeta's nod, her expression dims. "Do you know, I've been thinking—it's been a trying few days; I think it might be best if I stay in today. Get my strength up, recuperate a little."
Peeta looks baffled and a little hurt. "But you—you've been planning on coming all morning. And if you're tired, we can bring a blanket for you to sit on once we're there."
Effie's smile is beginning to look just a bit forced. "I could rest so much better here, though. Your house is so comfortable."
Haymitch glances at Katniss, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, but she looks baffled too. "Something on your mind, Effie?" he asks.
"Not at all! I just . . . I don't know that I'm up to seeing outsiders right now."
"They're just people you're going to see at the Unity Day celebration anyway," Katniss points out.
"Ah, yes, about that," says Effie. "I'm thinking I may sit that one out as well. I can celebrate just as well here at the Victor's Village."
"That's the whole reason you came here," says Katniss, baffled.
Curiously, Haymitch peers closer at Effie, but it's Peeta, as usual, who figures out what she's feeling first. "Effie," he says gently, "no one in 12 is going to be upset with you."
Clearly the boy is correct in his assumption because Effie flinches. "It's—I just don't want to ruin the celebration with my presence. I don't want to bring up a lot of bad memories for everyone. I know I'm just . . . the woman who appeared once a year to drag everyone down again."
In her words Haymitch hears the echo of how he described her the day after she arrived, and from her downcast expression he can tell she took the words to heart. And he's not sure what to say. He wants to be supportive, but for all of Peeta's reassurances, it's entirely possible that there are people in 12 who will be unhappy to see her at the Unity Day celebration. So he responds flippantly. "They won't even know who you are without your wigs," he says. "I didn't recognize you when you first showed up this week."
She seems surprised. "Really?" Then she shakes her head. "Yes, but if they do—"
"Effie, we really want you to come," Peeta says earnestly. "You've come all this way."
Katniss's reassurance seems more dutiful than earnest, but she offers it anyway. "We'd like to have you there."
And for Haymitch, the thought of her not attending the party because she feels unwelcome makes him uncomfortable—he didn't mean to give her a self-esteem problem, after all—although when he speaks, he works hard to sound as disinterested as he usually does. "If you don't come, I'll be a third wheel to these two," he says, nodding at Peeta and Katniss, to which Peeta responds with a wry smile. "And here's the thing: you coming is perfect, because if anyone's rude to you for being an escort, the rest of us can get all offended and leave early, which is what I wanted to do anyway."
"Haymitch," Peeta says disapprovingly, but Katniss is grinning.
There's a knock on the door then. "Simon and Leevy," Peeta guesses. "Effie, will you please come?"
Effie looks at him, and then at Katniss, and then at Haymitch. "Come on, Princess," he says with a half grin.
Her serious expression finally softens into a small smile. "All right," she says.
Katniss gives her own tiny smile. "I'm glad," she says, and goes to get the door.
"But if Simon and Leevy decide they don't want me to come—"
"It'll be fine," Haymitch says, and without thinking puts his hands reassuringly on her shoulders. Her eyes get a little wider, almost imperceptibly, and he feels heat rush to his face, and at the same moment they turn away from each other. Peeta catches Haymitch's eye and gives him a smirk.
. . . . . .
If Simon and Leevy recognize Effie from her escort days, neither of them comments on it, and by the time the group has reached the edge of the woods, Effie seems to have relaxed. They've headed west past town and are entering the woods near the train station. "Explains why I never saw this place," Katniss says. "I never hunted this direction; too close to town and the Peacekeepers."
"I remember you telling me that once," says Simon. "That's why I decided to explore this area. It occurred to me that I might be the first person in a century to walk through these trees."
Simon, as it turns out, is a bit of a local history buff. Although he grew up in the Seam, his grandfather was a merchant, and before he died, he gave Simon a history he'd written of District 12. "It's the only thing I took with me when we fled," he says. "It's priceless. We had to keep it hidden for years. Grandfather spent a night in jail just for asking old timers what they remembered about the past; if the Peacekeepers knew he'd been compiling all of that info into a book, he would have been in huge trouble, for sure."
"For having a book?" Effie sounds shocked.
"For having a history book," Simon confirms. "The Capitol didn't like us talking about history, unless it was their officially sanctioned version of things. Another way to keep us down—if we'd talked to each other about our history, about the things that make us who we are, it might have encouraged us to start standing up for ourselves."
Haymitch nods, remembering. "My grandpa used to tell us stories about being a kid before the Dark Days, but when he did he'd make sure all the doors and windows were locked. Never really thought about why, until now."
"Really?" Simon looks excited. "I'll have to talk to you about what you remember. I'm going to continue my grandfather's work—write about the bombing and the war and the reconstruction now."
A few minutes later, they come out of the trees at the top a steep incline and find themselves on what appears to be a wide path, choked with tree roots and plants, curving up and around the side of a hill. "I think this used to be a road," explains Simon.
They climb the road, crunching through the gravel that covers it in some spots, up around a bend, and suddenly they're in the town—or what remains of it, anyway. The land flattens out, and dotting either side of the road are houses in varying states of decay: most are little more than concrete foundations and porch steps surrounded by bits of rotting wood, but a few were built with brick and are still recognizably houses, even with their sagging roofs and decrepit doors. It's the first time Haymitch has ever seen anything that wasn't created or controlled by the Capitol, and he's surprised at how it takes his breath away. There was a world before Panem, he thinks. It's something he's always known to be true, but it's different to actually see it for himself.
His companions seem equally surprised into silence, but Katniss finally speaks up. "Those look just like the houses in the Seam," she says.
"I know," says Simon excitedly. "Which might confirm my theory that the Capitol didn't build 12, it created it out of an existing city. Maybe it did that for all the districts." He's silent a moment, as though looking for words. "When Panem was founded, I don't think the leaders carefully planned and built it, no matter how much the Capitol pretended to be the reason the rest of us existed. I think they cobbled a country together out of what was already there."
They sit in a grassy field and eat the lunch that Peeta and Effie packed, and then they walk on, passing a few cross-streets that are similarly dotted with houses and foundations. Here and there are fallen poles that used to carry power lines, and along the side of one road is a collection of glass, plastic and metal. Leevy peers closer at it. "What do you think that used to be? A car, maybe?"
After a while, the houses turn into buildings that look a lot like the old center of 12, all built in one long row down either side of the street; businesses, Haymitch assumes. These buildings are made of brick and stone and the walls have held up much better than the wooden houses at the edge of town, although it's clear from peering in the windows that the interiors have been all but destroyed by time. Some have collapsed roofs, letting sunlight and weather in, which is apparently all the invitation that the local plants needed to start trying to take over those places. "Being reclaimed by nature," as Leevy says. One particularly nice building has metal letters bolted to the front: "BANK."
The similarities to the now-destroyed 12 are striking, and they're not lost on Peeta. Haymitch looks up at one point to see him standing in front of one particular building with a huge front window—glass long since shattered—with his shaking hands clenched into fists. Haymitch steps closer, trying to see what's set his young friend off, but before he's figured it out Katniss is there, putting one hand on Peeta's shoulder. "What is it?"
Peeta jumps a little. "Sorry," he says. "It's just . . ." He gestures through the window.
Katniss and Haymitch both look inside to see a large metal block, rusted out but recognizable as an oven, surrounded by fallen shelves and dilapidated counters, everything covered in dust and dried leaves and other unidentified debris. "This was a bakery," Katniss says gently.
"Yeah," says Peeta softly, then shakes his head. Haymitch can see tears in the boy's eyes. "It just looks so much like ours did. I was thinking . . . my family . . ."
He breaks down. Katniss unhesitatingly wraps her arms around him, and Haymitch slips away, feeling like he's just intruded on a very private moment.
On the far side of the center of town is a red brick building, with just enough scraps of peeling wood and siding remaining for them to see that it used to be trimmed in white. It's grander than anything they've seen so far, except the bank, and the front of the building has something Haymitch has never seen: a sort of tower, tapering to a point. "What do you think this was?"
To his surprise, it's Effie who answers. "It's a church," she says, looking surprised. "You didn't have these in 12?"
Most of the group stares at her blankly, but Haymitch nods in recognition. "A church," he explains to the others. "For religious . . . goings-on."
"Oh," says Leevy. "We weren't allowed religion, but some people carried on in secret. My great-uncle's wife had a . . . I don't know what it was, like a necklace with sort of 't' on it, that she always wore under her dress, and she'd touch it when she was worried. She said she was praying, like her mother taught her."
Effie looks curiously at her, but then nods in understanding. "Another way to keep control of the districts, I suppose."
"You had churches in the Capitol?" asked Peeta.
"A few; they weren't very popular," says Effie. "And they all had to be approved of by the government."
"Ah," says Haymitch. "Make sure they're only teaching the gospel of Coriolanus Snow."
"How do you know about all this?" Effie asks him, gesturing at the church.
He shrugs. "Some of the stories my grandfather told were about his great-grandfather, who was a . . . you know, the leader of one of these churches. I guess this is the kind of place he worked. I'd never seen one."
Around the ruined church is a cemetery. "I didn't get to explore this last time before it started raining," says Simon excitedly. "Think of everything we could learn in here."
He barges on in, followed by Leevy and Effie, but Katniss balks at the gate. "I've had enough of dead people," she says, and she's got that haunted expression she gets when she remembers.
Peeta peers at her face, then tentatively takes her hand as though expecting her to reject it. But instead she smiles, and he looks relieved. "We'll stay out here," he tells Haymitch.
Well, that ruins things for him; he doesn't really want to go to the cemetery either, but he's not going to stay out here while these two are having a moment. So he shrugs. "Don't go far," he says, and wanders in through the gate.
The place looks nothing like 12's cemetery, where everyone has identical plaques marking their graves. This place has everything from simple plaques to big stone and concrete things—columns and lambs and tall rectangular slabs. They're largely worn down by weather until the writing on them is illegible, but a few can still be made out, especially those that are made of metal. Simon and Leevy are gathered around a cluster of these metal markers, reading them excitedly.
"Died August 4, 1956," reads Leevy. "When was 1956?"
"Veteran of World War Two," Simon reads from another. "There was a world war? There were two world wars?" He pulls a notebook from his pocket and starts scribbling something down.
"Look at this," Leevy says excitedly, gesturing at an obelisk-shaped stone where the writing is still clear. "MacCreery. Wasn't Delly Cartwright's mother a MacCreery? Do you think there could be a connection?"
This gets Simon excited as well, and as he makes another note in his notebook, Haymitch looks around. He supposes he could look for Abernathys, but the truth is, just being in here is making him anxious; he doesn't like dead people any more than Katniss does. So he glances around and sees that Effie has found a stone bench in a corner of the graveyard and is sitting with her face turned up toward the sun. He hesitates, and then he walks over and sits next to her.
She smiles beatifically at him, and he can't help smiling back. There's not much room on this bench, but he doesn't mind being in such close contact with her, and she doesn't seem to mind either; he supposes that falling asleep all over each other on the couch yesterday has broken down any hang-ups they had about touching each other. In fact, now that he's so close to her, he finds himself wanting to touch her—deliberately, not just to squish up against her because the bench is too small. Nothing big, just a hand on her knee, maybe? It's just because they're so close that there's not room for his arms at his sides; it'd be more comfortable. But he doesn't; he's pretty sure that would be weird.
"Enjoying the sun?" he asks.
"It's lovely, isn't it?" she responds, tipping her face back up to the sky. "This whole place is lovely. Strange, of course—a little eerie—but lovely, in a way. I don't think I've ever been somewhere that's so quiet."
"You a fan of graveyards?" he asks—not skeptically, just curiously.
"Not usually," she says. "Not in the Capitol. And I suppose if I were in 12 I wouldn't like to see a cemetery. But this place is . . . it's like we're out of the world, isn't it? Like we've left Panem. And the people here, they didn't die in the war, they didn't die in the Games, they just lived their lives and then they passed away. It's the way life is meant to go. It's the way we'll all live now; we'll live out our time and then we'll go. That's beautiful in a way, isn't it?"
He's never thought about it, but . . . "I guess it is."
"Plus . . ." She looks at him, seeming a little embarrassed, and then looks away. "I like being here. It's not my fault these people died. That's comforting."
It hurts him, strangely, to hear her say that. "You think it's your fault people died in Panem?"
She sighs and begins wringing her hands, something he used to see her do when they were watching their District 12 tributes together during six years of Hunger Games. "I . . . I know you think I'm just some silly Capitol escort who adored the Hunger Games," she says. He opens his mouth to protest and she cuts him off. "And I was, for a very long time. I used to watch them as a child, and I'd see the glamorous escorts with their tributes, wearing beautiful clothing and going to banquets and preparing them to fight for the glory of Panem, and I knew that was what I wanted to do with my life. And I did. For six years, I was part of the Hunger Games and I didn't think anything could make me happier." She sighs. "I believed what Snow said, that they were necessary for the peace. So even though it seemed monstrously unfair that Katniss and Peeta . . . or you . . . were going to have to go back for the Quarter Quell, I couldn't condemn the Games because Snow said they were necessary and I believed Snow." A dark expression flits over her face. "It wasn't until the system I'd dedicated my life to locked me in jail and tortured me that I realized how wrong I'd been, about so many things." She breaks off then and turns away from him, but not before he sees in her eyes the glimmer of unshed tears.
"I didn't know you felt this way," Haymitch said. "All week, you've still been so . . . enthusiastic about the Capitol."
She laughs a little. "There's a difference between the Capitol as a city and the Capitol as a corrupt government. The city is where I grew up; it's where all my friends live. And there are good people there. We were taught to believe in the government all our lives, and some people saw the system for the evil it was but most of us believed what we were taught. Why wouldn't we? It was a system where we were the elite. Why would we fight that?" He opens his mouth to respond and she cuts him off. "I know why we should have fought it. I'm just saying . . . Anyway, I was part of the Hunger Games, so in a way, those deaths . . . are on me. Some people fought the system even before the system fell apart. But I wasn't one of them. I was a willing pawn of the Capitol." She grimaces. "So yes, in some strange way, all this means being in this graveyard, away from Panem, is oddly peaceful. I feel miles away from all the mistakes I made."
Haymitch is speechless, which is strange for him. And what's stranger still is how much he wants to wrap his arms around Effie like he did yesterday, to banish the ghosts from behind her eyes. But while he's still processing this unfamiliar feeling, she looks around, then asks, "Where are Katniss and Peeta?"
"Didn't want to come in. Katniss said she's had enough of dead people. Can't say I blame her."
"You're not a fan of graveyards?" She echoes his question from earlier.
His mouth presses into a tight line. "No."
He's hoping that's the end of the conversation, but Effie's clearly seen something in his answer that she doesn't like. "Something you want to talk about?" she asks gently.
He shrugs.
"Some reason you don't like cemeteries?" she presses, but then she shakes her head with a little laugh. "I suppose that's a silly question; I suppose they remind you of . . . the death you've experienced in your life."
She seems content with her own explanation, and carries on looking up at the sky, but he stares at her a long moment, and then he finds himself speaking. "I used to have this dream," he says, wondering even as he speaks why he's admitting all this to Effie. "For the first few years after my Hunger Games. I was in a cemetery, and I had to bury all forty-seven of the other tributes, one by one. I had to look at each of their faces, then watch them disappear under the dirt. Almost every night for I don't know how long." She is staring at him now, and as he speaks, her surprised expression slowly morphs into a sympathetic one. He shrugs. "I finally stopped having it—I think mentoring new tributes was enough of a horror on its own that my brain didn't need to dwell on the old horrors as much. I haven't thought about that dream in twenty-some-odd years, but being here . . ."
Effie looks at him a long time, and then carefully she reaches out and takes his hand, her touch light and hesitant. Without a second thought he grips her hand back, tightly, and her posture relaxes and she leans her head against his shoulder. The pressure of it is comforting, and her hand is small and smooth and warm, and as the sun shines on them and a breeze winds around them, he thinks that maybe she's right; maybe this place is rather peaceful after all. He's almost sorry when Simon tells them it's time to leave. Almost.
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