60.

Effie didn't bolt to her feet when the door was flung open but she still startled like everybody else.

She stared at Haymitch while Haymitch stared at Johanna and her knife.

"Bit on edge, sweetheart?" he challenged.

Johanna scoffed but put the knife away and flopped back down on the couch next to Peeta. "Don't call me names, old man."

"Fair enough." He snorted, closing the door behind him. He might have looked aloof but his grey eyes darted from one of them to the other, cataloguing… When he was sure none of them was hurt, he relaxed.

Meanwhile, Effie was fixated on the brand new row of stitches over his left eyebrow.

He must have sensed her stare because he made a face. "Caught the butt of a gun with my face. I'm fine, princess."

"Katniss?" Peeta asked immediately.

Haymitch grew more somber. "She's less fine." He took a few steps closer to them, his eyes roamed over the mess of empty glasses on the coffee table, lingered over the almost empty decanter full of liquor… In the end, he perched half his butt on the armrest of the armchair Annie had chosen for herself, rubbing his mouth. "She's safe, though. They've… The rebels came together to…"

"Yeah, Heavensbee showed up." Jo cut him off. "So, who gets to be President now?"

"Nobody." He waved a hand. "For now we've got a council with someone from each District and Plutarch for the Capitol… Paylor's leading it." Effie didn't know who Paylor was but everyone around the room seemed to relax. More things she had missed, she figured as Haymitch kept talking. "We're gonna have elections as soon as we can organize them. That's the priority. President first and then local people in each District… It's gonna take a few weeks but it's gonna happen."

There was a moment of awed silence around the room that Effie didn't really understand. It was an important moment, that much was obvious but…

"Free elections…" Peeta whispered as if he couldn't quite believe it.

"Yeah…" Haymitch snorted, almost incredulous himself. "And everyone gets a vote."

"Should have cut out the Capitol." Johanna scoffed. "Those assholes…"

"That's not how a democracy works, Jo." Peeta retorted.

Effie wasn't sure how a democracy worked, maybe it was somewhere hidden in her head and it would come forward if she poked around, but she also wasn't sure she actually cared.

"Katniss." she said, bringing them back on track. It was the important thing here and…

"Yeah…" Haymitch made a face. "So, the council decided to put her on trial for shooting Coin."

"A trial?" Annie frowned. "But…"

"They had to. If people went around murdering Presidents without consequences…" He made a face. "But it's gonna be fine. Priority's organizing elections so we've got time to prepare her defense. We're gonna plead insanity, plus Plutarch's confident we can make deals. As long as nobody from Thirteen gets elected, I think we're gonna be fine."

"You think." Peeta spat. "That's a hell of a gamble, Haymitch. How long have you been planning it?"

The two of them stared at each other long and hard, almost glaring…

Effie rubbed her eyes, not really caring for the sudden hostility in the room.

"Where is she now?" she asked. She felt like collapsing from exhaustion but she would make a last effort, she decided, she would drag herself to the girl's side, make sure she was alright…

Haymitch's gaze darted to her, his face closing. "She's… They've locked her up in her room at the Training Center."

"The penthouse?" Peeta asked, half rising from his seat. "Why?"

He didn't answer immediately. He twisted his mouth to the side a little, clearly weighting what words to use… "Cause… A case was made that she's a danger for herself and others. They want her under locks and keys until the trial and it's the best compromise between hotel and prison. They've got hidden cameras up in the tributes' rooms." He scoffed. "Probably all over the place, really… I knew it was bugged, I didn't think they were actually watching."

He shot Effie a discreet glance and she wondered what it was about before she remembered what he had told her, what they had probably done everywhere, right under those cameras… A shiver ran down her spine at the violation of it all.

"We could burst her out." Johanna suggested without a second of hesitation.

"We ain't gonna burst her out." Haymitch snapped. "She's… Look, it's not all bad. They're gonna sober her up for one thing."

"Cold turkey?" Peeta scoffed. "How did that work out for you?"

Again, Haymitch's eyes came to rest on that decanter and Effie lost her patience. She leaned forward and toppled it, watching as the amber liquid poured out and seeped into the wood, ran down to the carpet… It would leave a stain. On the carpet, on the table… She didn't care anymore. She didn't even mind the mess. She just wanted…

"Don't mind her, she's having a day." Johanna taunted, waving the incident off because Haymitch was staring at her.

Effie felt the heat on her cheeks and almost regretted her hasty move but…

Haymitch didn't comment at all but he licked his lips, his grey eyes lingering on her before going back to Peeta. "Thing is, kid… Right now it's the best we could get. She's under a twenty-four hours watch… She's safe. Safer than she'd be roaming around."

"Can we see her?" Effie insisted.

She wanted to hug her girl, to hold on to her until Katniss knew she wasn't all alone and…

"No." He made a face. "They want to keep her isolated. No contact. Not even me or her mom."

This time, Effie understood perfectly well the new wave of hostility in the room.

"We are not leaving her alone for whoever knows how long!" she snapped.

"She killed the acting-President!" he retorted as if that mattered.

"Yes, because you as good as gave her permission!" Peeta argued, bolting to his feet this time. "I don't see you locked up in your old room!"

Haymitch stood up too. "Cause you think there was any stopping her?"

"Please, don't fight." Annie whispered softly, her hands going to her stomach.

For a second, Effie wasn't sure the gentle plea would be enough but both of them seemed to reluctantly stand down.

"I cannot believe Doctor Aurelius signed off on this. Katniss needs us." Effie huffed in the resulting awkward silence. "Perhaps if he…"

"He argued against it and he was outvoted." Haymitch sighed. "Look… It's a new Panem out there. For real. No more dictatorship."

"Doesn't look that way to me…" Johanna scowled.

"Plutarch and I did the best we could." he insisted.

"I would hate to see you try your worst." Effie said before she could think twice about it. She hated the way he flinched. She hated that she had hurt him more deeply than Johanna or Peeta had. She rubbed her face, wincing. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry… It's been a long day."

Haymitch didn't make eye contact with her or acknowledge her apology. "Aurelius is leaving for his new clinic in the morning… Kid, if you still wanna go, you should start packing." He made a face and awkwardly reached out for the boy but dropped his hand before he could make contact. It was for the best. Peeta didn't really look receptive. "But you don't have to, I stand by that."

Peeta stared at him long and hard and then dropped his eyes to the floor, burying his shaky hands in his pockets. "I still want to."

"Okay." Haymitch nodded, not really looking happy about it. He turned to Johanna next. "We all have to go anyway 'cause I've been told the Presidential Mansion ain't a hotel so…"

"Good thing I've got us sorted then." Johanna deadpanned, getting to her feet. "Come on, Cresta… Let's go pack. I've got a feeling this place won't be any fun tomorrow."

"They're not against us." Haymitch shook his head. "They just want… They want a shot at the real thing. And if we want that too, it means we can't just… We can't expect special rules for us."

"Right…" Johanna scoffed bitterly. "Cause it's not like we've earned some favors through blood and pain or something…"

Effie didn't move from the armchair as the three of them left, Peeta dropping a light kiss on her cheek, following an irate Johanna.

"Where are we going?" she asked, the second Haymitch had closed the suite's door behind them. Her apartment was not an option yet.

He sighed as he turned back toward her. "Plutarch's house's ready, he's got a guest room." She wrinkled her nose and he snorted. "Yeah, I had a feeling you'd say that so I called your dad. Had to tell him you were alright anyway… He said we can stay with them as long as we need."

It was his turn to wrinkle his nose.

"I'd rather go to my parents' than Plutarch's. I don't… I don't like him. He never says what he means, it confuses me. And that woman who is always around him? Fulvia? She doesn't like me, I can tell." Effie let out a sigh of her own and unfolded herself from the armchair. Her limbs were still stiff and her body felt heavy as she drifted toward the bedroom, aware that he was following her. "I'll… I'll try to get the apartment finished faster… I know you don't want to stay with my family."

"There's a third option." he said carefully, still behind her. She was already pulling back the sheets on the bed, eager to lie down at last, so she shot him a curious glance. His hands were in his pockets, he wasn't meeting her eyes, and he was awkwardly shifting his weight from the balls of his feet to his toes. "I can go to Plutarch's and you can go to your folk's."

The sheets and blankets slipped from her fingers. She barely realized she was standing straighter because it felt like the floor was being pulled right from under her feet. "Separate?"

"If you want a break from this." he offered, still not looking at her. "The option's there."

"A break from this?" she repeated, confused and… Her head hurt, she was tired and frustrated and… "It doesn't make sense, Haymitch. Make fucking sense!"

If he was shocked by her outburst, it didn't show. He looked like he was bracing himself. His face was closed in a blank mask she couldn't read, his shoulders were tense as if he was ready for a fight and he seemed… He seemed…

"The way you looked at me this morning…" His voice was rough, full of pain and anguish. "I've been waiting for you to start looking at me like this for months. I knew it'd happen eventually. You're doing so much better than you were when they first rescued you… And that's good. That's fucking good, Effie… Wouldn't want to hold you back. But the way you looked at me… Whatever you got from that episode yesterday…" His voice broke completely. "You know now, yeah? That you hated me? That you…"

His sentence trailed off, waiting for her to interject maybe but she was too slow because her brain was playing catch up, because she was…

He cleared his throat. "You said you'd… You said even if you ever got your memories back or you ever remembered you hated me…"

"I don't remember things, Haymitch. Use proper words." she hissed even though she wasn't angry. Even though…

"Fine." He didn't raise his voice, he didn't grow hostile, he just… He just stood there. Defeated. "You said you wouldn't blame me for getting back together even if you knew you hated me… You said… You said you wouldn't forget the last few months and…" Suddenly, he was moving, crossing the room. He grabbed her hands, squeezed them hard, with some sort of frenzied despair. "Sweetheart, can I fix this? Can you let me try? Cause I'm gonna do everything right, I promise… I'm gonna do anything you want…" He shook his head. "I wish I'd been better at it from the start… I wish I'd been less of an asshole to you… I wish…" He let go of one of her hands to cup her cheek, searching her eyes. "Give me one last chance, Effie. That's all I need, I swear. And I get it if you want space or time or whatever… I just… I just need you to tell me we can fix it, yeah? Even if it takes ten years, I just… I want to fix this. Can't lose you. It's gonna kill me if I lose you. Please, princess, just let me make it right… Just let me…"

She kissed him.

Was there anything else to do to shut him up? To stop him from sounding so strangled and terrified? She knew that terror shining in his eyes, it was the very same one she had felt that morning when she had thought her whole world was crumbling around her.

He kissed her back with complete abandon, with insatiable hunger that tasted like hopelessness.

When she drew back, he chased after her mouth.

"I love you, you idiot." she huffed against his lips because he wouldn't stop pecking them, trying to coax her back into another kiss… She sneaked her hand between their mouths so he would stop. It wasn't that she really minded the kissing but her headache… She kept it on his lips as she gently pushed his head back a little so she could meet his eyes. "I don't hate you at all."

He frowned, hope and wariness battling in his eyes. "This morning…"

The words came out muffled by her hand and she dropped it, placed it on his shoulder instead. "I was confused this morning, Haymitch. Johanna said some things yesterday…"

She let her sentence trail off, not quite sure how to explain it all.

"What triggered the episode, sweetheart?" he asked. His hand was gentle as it brushed her still slightly damp hair back and away from her face. "You didn't say."

"It was… It was more about the time with the Peacekeepers." She made a face. "I don't really want to talk about it."

He watched her for a while and then finally seemed to relax. "Are you sure you don't hate me? Cause I deserve it, Effie. I can take it. I just… I just want a chance to fix it if you do…"

She wrapped her arms around him and leaned her head on his shoulders, relaxing into his body that was so much stronger than hers. He embraced her back immediately, so, so tight…

"She made me doubt my feelings." she confessed. "And it was horrible because feelings are the only thing I'm sure about…"

"But maybe if you doubted them…" he hesitated.

"No." She sighed. "She was just messing with me because she was angry. I love you. I never hated you, she told me herself that I admitted as much before they… Before they wiped out my mind." She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry about this morning, I am, and it's not that I don't want to have this conversation, we can finish it tomorrow if you want, but right now I really need to lie down, Haymitch… My head has been killing me all day and I am so tired…"

"Shit." he cursed in her ear. "You should have said…" Next thing she knew, he was carefully helping her into bed and tucking her under the blankets. "How bad is it? Fog bad? You need some painkillers?"

The screeching of the curtains being pulled closed made her grit her teeth but then the sunlight was finally gone and the room was dark enough that her eyes didn't hurt too much… She sighed in relief.

"I had two this morning." she replied after a second.

"At once? That's too much." he chided. "Although it sure explains why you looked like you'd fall asleep standing up…" It hadn't been her most clever plan, that was true. "Maybe we wait another couple of hours for another pill, then… What about food? Did you even have lunch?"

She was a little hungry now that he mentioned it but she didn't want to go to the hassle of getting back out of bed for food. "I just want to rest…"

"Okay…" he whispered. She felt the prickly sensation of his stubble as he bowed over the bed to drop a kiss to her forehead. "You rest, sweetheart."

In a way, it was almost worse now that she finally had what she wanted and she was lying down in the dark. Because it was one thing to fight through one of those migraines all day but it was another to surrender to it and… She tried to sleep. She dozed off a few times, aware that Haymitch was creeping around the suite as silently as he could – packing, she figured. Sometimes in late afternoon, he insisted on her eating something. She was so out of it that she chewed and swallowed automatically without tasting any of it. She drank half a glass of water and gratefully accepted the new dose of painkiller. Doctor Brown would have had something to say about taking three in a day, probably, but…

It knocked her out.

It must have because when her eyelids fluttered open again, the room was properly dark – night dark, not sunlight behind curtains dark – and for the first time in hours she could breathe without it triggering stab of lightning pain inside her head. Her mind was a bit slow, a bit dozy from the drugs which was why she hated taking them…

She outstretched a hand and hummed when it collided with naked skin. She wriggled closer until she was snuggled against his warmth, sighing in relief when arms closed around her, carefully tugging her even closer. Her head found its favorite spot on his shoulder and she nuzzled the warm skin under her cheek, a small smile playing on her lips. His fingers immediately started running through her hair in lazy strokes.

"Tell me it's gonna be alright, sweetheart…" he murmured, so low she almost didn't catch it.

It took a moment for her brain to kick in, for the words to make sense, for her to register the unexpected distress in his voice...

How long had he been lying there awake?

"What's wrong?" she whispered back, her words slurring together a little because her mind still wasn't one hundred percent hers.

"The boy's right…" he mumbled. "I gave her permission… She'd have done it either way, I guess, but… That trial thing… Plutarch's sure it's gonna work out but…" He swallowed hard. "And there's something I didn't tell you… Didn't want to say it in front of the kids… She's… She's suicidal. She tried to hurt herself. I played it cool earlier with Peeta but… I tried to get her out of there, sweetheart, I tried to tell them she'd be better off with me, us… They wouldn't go for it. What if…"

He was talking too fast, not making much sense…

She pushed a little on his chest so she could lift her head, try to search his face in the dark… He looked back at her, fear shone in his eyes…

"What can we do?" she asked bluntly.

He snorted. "Short of going with Jo's half-cooked plan of bursting her out and then live the rest of our lives as fugitives?"

He was actually considering it, she could see it. And she had also seen the penthouse… There was no way he and Johanna could take that place, sneak Katniss out – all the more so if she didn't cooperate – and… And then what? What would they do? Run? Hide? Where? How long?

"Realistically." she corrected. "What can we do?"

"We can stay on the doctors' asses to make sure they take care of her. We can make sure everyday she's okay. I can request access to the security feed." he reluctantly listed. "We can win that fucking trial, get her back and go as far away from this fucking city as we can. Try to help her build a new life for herself…"

"Then, that's what we do." She shrugged, resting her head back down on his shoulder.

She heard him lick his lips. "If anything happens to her, that's on me, sweetheart. And she's like my… If anything happens to her…"

"Nothing will happen to her." she declared in a tone that broke no argument. It was time for a little optimism, she decided, she was good at that. Optimism. Or she had been. Before. She could be again, she mused, one of them had to."We will get our girl back, I promise."

She felt the exact moment it worked because he relaxed a fraction, his arms tightening around her.

"I… I…" His chest swelled and flattened a few times under her hand, his body shifted… He let out a frustrated groan. "Three fucking words. How come I can't… I want to tell you… I…"

"It's alright." she whispered soothingly, rubbing her thumb on his skin.

"But it ain't." He sighed. "You deserve to hear it every fucking day."

"I know." she hummed. And she was an idiot for having doubted them for one moment. She knew. She knew she loved him. And she knew he loved her. "Sleep now, darling, tomorrow is going to be a big, big, big day…"

She barely felt him tense against her, didn't understand why…

The words had slipped out of her mind, forgotten…

And she was already drifting off again.