Effie always preferred one tribute to the other every year that she was an escort, and her first year was no different. The little girl was called Susan, and Effie thought she suited the name, sweet but plain and unassuming. Effie wanted to bundle her up in blankets when she arrived in the Capitol she looked so shaken by the whole experience. Effie stayed positive and she said the words 'you never know, you might win it' so many times that both of the children looked, by the end of training, like they half-believed what she was saying.
She didn't like being an escort but then, it wasn't like she had asked for the job. Escorts were picked out of popular personalities in the Capitol. She supposed she should be flattered, after all, she was getting too old to model and she didn't want to end up like her mother, presenting the weather as exuberantly as it was possible too and drinking at home to cope with it.
She didn't like Haymitch Abernathy either. He was a rude, uncouth, drunk who was quite happy to see children die without even trying to help them. She must have been being punished for something, she had been placed in a District it was almost impossible to move out of and stuck with a man like that. So Effie didn't know which of them was more surprised that she ended up crying in his arms ten minutes after the games started, both of her tributes dead. She felt oddly comforted by him, knowing that she should have listened to him earlier, should have accepted that they were hopeless cases and not got her hopes up, not got attached to them.
"I wish I didn't care." Effie said softly.
"It's easier." he replied after a moment, and Effie wondered if he really believed that. He took his arm from around her shoulders and she missed the weight of it immediately, but she wasn't going to ask him to put it back.
Effie didn't smoke, but she smoked when one of her tributes died. She had tried cigarettes when smoking was in fashion for a few months and still liked it, more for the motions and deep breaths than anything else. She walked outside on to the balcony, comforted by smoking, by being up high, by the sight of her apartment building only a few blocks away. She was supposed to stay in the tribute centre until the end of the Games, but maybe she could ask permission and go home, on the guise of getting some more clothing, even just for a few hours. Surely she would be able to find some peace of mind within the walls of her own home? She decided then it would be tradition for her to have one smoke per dead tribute because it gave her an excuse to light up a second time. She wondered if Haymitch was watching her out there, but when she looked over her shoulder he was entirely preoccupied by the bottle he was nursing. If he was any indication of how things were going to go, this job was not going to get easier any time soon. She was already worried about the next year. She hoped and prayed that she picked someone who actually stood a chance.
"You smell like smoke." Haymitch complained when she walked back in. She shot him a glare.
"And you constantly smell like whiskey, but I haven't mentioned it until now."
"You're much nicer when other people are around." Effie smiled sweetly. She would never go so far as to be impolite to him, but she wouldn't resist getting a few digs in here and there, he was the kind of person who would think she was weak if she didn't. Besides, she was angry. She had failed, her tributes had died. Effie Trinket was not accustomed to failing.
"You'll be too hungover to remember this in the morning anyway." Effie said as she sat back down on the sofa. Haymitch gave her a look that asked why she was still there, but she ignored it. "You know I didn't watch the games when I was younger. My father wouldn't let me see the violence, he was probably the only parent in the Capitol who was concerned about that. I saw bits and pieces of course, heard about the winner, but I didn't watch it properly until I was in my teens. I didn't like it, but I still never found it as horrifying as this time. Seeing them before they go in…" She didn't have to finish. Haymitch had been in there, and he had been a mentor for years. She correctly guessed that he knew exactly how she felt.
"I guess if they don't ingrain it into you early you accidentally have a reaction to it besides hoping your favourite doesn't die."
Haymitch was indeed too hungover to remember they had even spoken in the morning, or he said he was anyway. Effie remembered. She went over it a hundred times in her head because even if Haymitch didn't like her, he did understand how she felt, and that was important.
Cashmere from District 1 won the games, and she was all smiles during the celebrations afterwards and Effie was amazed that a pretty face, blonde hair, and a soft voice were enough to make everyone forget that she had beheaded her own ally to secure the crown. Effie had watched it and every time she saw the young woman she saw the spurt of blood coming from the neck of the girl from District 4 that had been Cashmere's last opponent. The first night after she won, Effie had a nightmare that she woke up screaming from that she was in the place of the poor beheaded girl and the next day she found herself struggling from breath when she attended the victory party and had to shake Cashmere's hand. She had run outside as soon as all eyes were off her. She was surprised she made it out there without fainting, more surprised that Haymitch followed her.
"How can they just forget?" she asked him quietly. She already knew that nobody else was out there, but Haymitch checked anyway before he replied.
"That's just what happens, sweetheart." Her head was still spinning and she had to sit down on the steps outside because she was worried if she fell she would crack her head open. "You know, you might turn out to be good company after all if you keep hating this as much as you do now." She hated how much his approval pleased her.
One Hunger Games was enough to make Effie second guess the world she had grown up in, not that she would admit that out loud. In fact, in years to come she would get better at acting as though it excited her to be reaping children, to get to watch them fighting and dying, whispering 'chins up, smiles on' before she walked out anywhere the cameras might see her. It helped, but not much.