Chapter 3

~ Haymitch ~

Hey, I was asleep until those two started fighting on my porch. It was only a matter of time, damn birds getting out of their pen and honking all over my yard. Stupid feathers and crap all over the place, squawking. I oughta take them all out back and have a roast for dinner. Where's my other bottle, I left it around here somewhere. Where is... oh there it is. Ugh... tastes like crap. Why did the sun have to come up so early... I just fell asl... What the hell are they doing out there? Never heard a bunch of birds make that much noise in my...

CRASH.

Okay, not birds. Can't be birds. I was struggling to my feet, it took a minute to get my bearings, the pounding in my head a constant reminder that down was the direction I should probably have stayed. Whoever's out there's gonna get an earful, then maybe something thrown at em. We'll see what kinda mood I'm in about a minute from now. Door handle's a little sticky, don't remember how it got that wa...

The boy was in one of his rages, on my porch, on top of her and bringing all his weight down on her neck. Dammit, I thought he was over this... I peeled him off her, sometimes I surprised myself by my own strength. "What's wrong with you, boy?" I hollered at him. Then I saw, his eyes were black as I'd ever seen em, and after he stumbled back, he went after her again. So I decked him, right across the face. He went down hard. Then I turned to the girl.

"You okay, Sweethear... Oh no." She was out, I didn't know how out but she was out. Limp. I got down and tapped her face with my fingers, nothing. Kinda purple too. I felt... nope, no air... Oh man I don't know how to do this...

"Dammit!" I spun on the boy. "Don't you dare move!" I hollered. Kid had his head in his hands, rocking. Whatever it was, he was out of it.

Phone, phone... where's the damn... oh there it is. I jammed the plug in the wall, wasn't taking any chances with leftover bugs and Capitol eavesdropping tech. Some lady's voice came on.

"Abernathy... the Village... got a girl, can't breathe, need a medic. Get off it and get here now!" I slammed the receiver down, it kinda fell half off the cradle.

Rammed the door on the way back out, it swung out and hit the boy in the shins. Serves him right at the least for what he done to her... aw dammit she's still not moving! I didn't know what else to do, so I got down on the ground, took her by the shoulders and sat her up, pulled her against my chest and rocked her. "Sweetheart, you better not die on me, I didn't keep you alive out there for nothing!" I'm not sure if I felt her move, but then I wasn't sure of anything. "I swear I'll go easy on the 'shine from now on, but you gotta move or something. If you don't stick around I'm gonna kill that boy of yours."

Speaking of 'that boy', he was still backed into the corner of the porch rocking himself. I wished he'd whack his head on the railing and snap out of it already, I didn't have a clue what I was doing.

The medics took her from me. Put her on a sterile slab and stuck something in her mouth, had her chest moving real fast. Said she'd probably make it. Asking me what happened, told em I couldn't remember. Easy enough story when it's usually the truth. Besides, I was handling that boy myself. He stayed quiet, I don't even know if they saw him. They took the girl in a white truck, told me where to go. Then they were gone. I needed a drink real bad.

"Boy, you love that girl! What's wrong with you?" I turned on him.

Still rocking. I grabbed his arms and shook him good and hard. His weird eyes shrank and blew up and shrank again, kinda turned from black to blue. I was gonna turn him both in a sec if he didn't start talking. The side of his face was already blooming kinda purple where I decked him.

His eyes flickered back and forth, then trained on me. Face crumpled.

"I killed her!" he blurted out. "Haymitch I killed her!" Tears and snot ran down his face and the sobs, oh the sobs made my ears hurt. Then he collapsed on the ground, started squawling about something, sounded like he asked me to kill him.

I rolled my eyes. It was his stupid episodes that made me stay away most of the time. Sae calls me insensitive. Hey, I did my part, I brought em home. Not my fault they got sent back again, not my fault the Capitol screwed him up. I just don't want to deal with this crap, but he ain't got anybody else.

"Kid, she's not dead," I said, like it was common knowledge. Of course he didn't hear me through all that bawling. I had to drag him up and make him look at me. "She's. Not. Dead."

He kinda half-stopped crying, kept heaving, and blinked at me.

"Now stop-" I rapped him hard on both shoulders on the word- "your blathering and tell me what the hell happened."

"She's... I didn't..." he looked around, bewildered. I wondered for a sec if I ever looked like this. Must be almost funny to watch me when I'm confused.

"Sentences," I egged him on. "Sentences are good."

"But where..." he started looking for her, all frantic.

"The medics took her. Said she'd probably be ok..."

"Probably?"

"Yes, probably! Now tell me what the fark happened to make you go off like that you little twit or I'll drag you down to the Justice Center and have you locked up." I wasn't kidding. Well, mostly.

He sniffed. I handed him the hankie from my back pocket and he wiped his face on it. Don't think it was used, didn't really give a hoot.

"Start talking."

~ Peeta ~

I remember everything.

Every. Single. Detail. Flooded into my brain like that wave on the beach. My plan for her safety had backfired. And it was my fault.

My sweet Katniss would never forgive me.

I'd never forgive myself.

My nose was running. I wiped it again, not quite focusing properly. The cloth smelled musty... and like smoke. "Her hair..."

Haymitch rolled his eyes. "Complete sen-ten-ces," He articulated.

I tried again. "She cut her hair."

He rolled his eyes again. "Yeah, she's a girl. They do that sometimes. No reason to choke her to death."

I gave him one of the meanest looks I'd probably ever issued. He choked back a laugh, but I continued. "It wasn't supposed to happen," I insisted. "Sh- she came in, and I wasn't seeing her, I was seeing... I'd made her look like that."

Haymitch sat back against the doorjamb and ran a hand over his hair. "You're gonna have to make sense at some point."

I heaved a shuddered, post-crying breath, looking around like the answers were going to be written in the wood grains of the porch railings. I finally looked him dead in the face. "The... episodes... the effects from what they did to me. When I try really hard, I can change things while one is happening... little things... so I can tell what's true and what's not. I knew... well, I thought I knew... that Katniss would never cut her hair, so I made the hallucination of her have short hair... so I'd know the difference," I strung along brokenly. "When she walked in..." my voice cracked, remembering her drop her hood, and her eyes... her beautiful gray eyes turned blood-red, and became the monster from my nightmares. The one who took the Capitol's drugs and manipulations willingly, who delighted in making me suffer, who hurt herself deliberately and forced me to watch. The one who said she'd given the order that dropped bombs on the town, burning my family alive. The one who had seduced me, made me believe she was carrying my child, then rid herself of it intentionally. I felt bile churning in my stomach. My face crumpled and I couldn't finish.

Haymitch looked a little stunned, and a lot sober. "Sorry kid, I didn't know."

I had to hold my breath in short spurts to keep the sobs from pouring out. "Hay-mitch, you- have to- see- that she's- all- right," I pleaded.

He sighed and got to his feet, then dragged me up by the arm. "Yeah, and I'm not going by myself."

~ Katniss ~

The tubes that send us into the arena are claustrophobic at first. Then, all you can think about is what's around you, what you're in for, and you're glad to have that glass wall between you and the twenty-two other tributes that might end your life at the end of the countdown.

But this arena wasn't from before. The air looked like ashy greenish smoke, stagnant, thick and unforgiving. The other tubes... I could hardly see them. Then my tube started to open. It wasn't smoke.

It was water.

I was being held down to the plate by my feet, it must release when the timer hit zero. I hoped.

"Thirty eight... Thirty seven..."

What was I doing here again? Wasn't I done with this? I could barely make out the other tributes, struggling, panicking. But if I'm here, where's... Peeta. And it hit me, he can't swim. Not well enough to escape this.

"Twenty... Nineteen..."

I willed myself to keep calm. The only District that would really be a threat at this point is Four, and chances were they'd have their hands full with the others. I had to get some air and then find Peeta before they did.

"Two... One."

My feet released, and I kicked my way upward, my lungs already straining. The surface was ahead, and I rocketed up, headfirst, ready to take a breath. And my head hit a wall.

I'd already started to take a breath preemptively. Now my lungs were spasming to expel the thick fluid, and screaming to draw in air that wasn't there. My hands thrown above me, hit a clear barrier that was the only thing between this crushing water and lifesaving air.

It felt like forever.

Then my chest started to stiffen. My arms and legs became weak. I began to sink, and I thought, so this is what drowning feels like.

Peeta, I'm so sorry.

I almost didn't notice when something took me under the arms and hoisted me up. and suddenly I felt cold. And wet. And heavy, that was the worst part. Heavy. And then sleepy.

Katniss.

I knew that voice. But it didn't matter. The air hadn't come.

Get up, Katniss.

My vision clouded, and he was there, staring down at me, the sun forming a halo where his head got in the way. But this was no angel.

You have work to do.

Then he kissed me. And I could finally breathe.