Dang you guys are good at the guessing game! Most of you guys got it.

Chapter 19

I help Prim out by carrying Thresh to his room upstairs and tucking him in under the covers. He doesn't wake, just rolls over.

Prim stands in the entrance way of a room across the hall. She leans against the door frame and crosses her arms across her chest. She stares in the room for a long time. I come up from behind her and wrap my arms around her. I have to bend down a little to rest my chin on her shoulder and get my voice in her ear, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, it's just this was my old room." I look inside the door. Girlish clothes cover the ground. The bed's covers are pushed down to the bottom of the mattress. The closet door is flung open and the curtains sway softly as wind comes in through the open window, "It hasn't changed at all," she finally says.

I watch as she sits on her bed and looks around her sadly. I can feel the pain she has for being here. Her family thought she had died and although I don't blame her, she let them believe that. I decide to give her a moment so I step out.

"Where are you going?" she calls after me.

"Uh, to get Lucy. She'll freeze if we leave her out in the car."

Prim nods and I head downstairs to go get Lucy. I open the front door and head out into the chilly night air. I walk to the car and open the back door. Lucy wakes to the cool breeze. I grab her arm and help lead her inside. I tow her upstairs and put her down on the couch in the upstairs living room. She grunts but then happily goes back to sleep.

I leave the room and head back to Prim. As she sees me in the doorway, she wipes her eyes dry. I head over and sit down next to her on the bed. I wrap my arms protectively around her. "So you wanted me to meet some one?"

She nods.

"In the morning?"

"No, we might as well go now. He won't be up in the morning but Thresh will be. Last time I was here, mom and dad hadn't let Thresh meet him, they're afraid he's a bad influence."

"If he's a bad influence, why did they let you meet him?"

"Well, they think he's what messed me up, they didn't want the same to happen to Thresh." I allow her to drag me along by the hand. We go outside. I walk over to the car but she shakes her head, "He's just next door."

We walk over to a house that looked much like Prim's. I look up at it, "Prim are you sure, this house looks abandoned."

"That's just how he wants it to look."

I shrug my shoulders and walk up the steps. I knock on the door and am waiting for it to be answered, "No one must be home Prim." She laughs at my remark. She jiggles the door handle a little bit. It's locked. She walks around the side of the house, "What, is there no hidden key?"

She keeps walking while she talks, "He wouldn't remember where he put it anyways."

She jiggles a window free and climbs in. She reaches out her hand to help me through, "Prim, this is starting to seem a lot like breaking and entering."

She rolls her eyes, "I do this all the time. Besides, he won't call the cops, he's not like that."

I shrug and take her hand. She pulls me up through the window. She walks through the house by memory. Finally we reach a dark kitchen. I see the figure of a man with his head resting on the table. Several bottles surround him and it smells like alcohol, "Kind of seems like my weekends."

She snorts, "Don't ever go back, I like you better sober."

She switches on a couple of lights but the man continues to sleep. She walks up and shakes the figure, "Haymitch. Haymitch!" he continues to sleep. She sighs heavily and opens a cupboard from the kitchen. She pulls out a large pitcher as if it was her own home and fills it with cold icy water. She heads back to the man and pours it on his head.

He screams when he wakes up and out of know where pulls out a knife. I leap out to protect Prim but she just shrugs me away. She gently pushes down Haymitch's arm that holds the knife, "Haymitch, it's me. I'm back."

He takes in her face. His words are slurred from his drunken state, "Hey, I always knew you'd come back Sweat heart."

I look at Prim in question, "I thought you didn't like being called Sweat heart."

"No, just not by you," I feel a little offended but she elaborates, "That's Haymitch's nickname for me, I inherited it from my mother. It's just, I don't know, it belongs to him." I nod as if I get it but I don't.

Prim kind of hits the drunk in the chest to get his attention, "This is Haymitch, Haymitch this is-"

"Finnick?" Haymitch asks in confusion, "But you died in the rebellion. I mean, not that I care but if ghosts are gonna start haunting me, I need some fair warning, got it Sweat heart?"

Prim laughs, "No, this is his son, Nick."

I stick out my hand to shake with Haymitch's. He ignores it and grabs a bottle. He pops off the cap with his teeth and starts drinking.

Prim sighs heavily, "Can't you ever be sober?" a smile spreads across her lips as if it were an inside joke.

Haymitch stretches out his arms to gesture to him whole self, "Wouldn't be Haymitch if I ever was."

She laughs, "That's for sure."

Haymitch points to me, "So is he?"

Prim nods.

Haymitch busts up laughing, "I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree!" I feel offended by his remark but keep quiet.

I look at Prim in confusion. She looks back at me, "He knows all about it: the Capitol, our 'jobs'. I tell him everything."

After a slightly awkward silence, Prim occupies herself by examining all of the bottles on the dining table. She picks up an empty bottle of rubbing alcohol. She looks pissed, "Have you been drinking this?" The man shrugs and lifts his newly opened bottle back to his lips. Prim throws it at him. He only flinches a little bit, "You know you're not supposed to. It makes you sick."

"I've been sick for a long time Sweat heart."

I lean in to whisper to Prim, "What's the point of us being here?"

Prim doesn't bother whispering or anything, "I just wanted him to know I made it. Plus it would sound really bad if I came back to twelve without visiting him."

Haymitch slumps down deep into his chair, "I wouldn't care if you didn't visit me."

She rolls her eyes, "Yes you would. Besides, I have news."

His dull eyes flicker a little bit with interest but he does a good job to hide it.

"Not that you shouldn't already know considering my parents are missing!"

He again shrugs, "I didn't really notice they were gone."

"They visit you every day, how can you not notice!"

"I don't remember a lot of things," There's a brief silence, "Well? The news?"

"Well it's more of we need advice."

He groans, "Always want something. Always advice. In case you haven't noticed, I'm not the best guy to get advice from," he takes another drink.

"Oh shut up Haymitch. We pulled a little stunt at the Capitol." He doesn't looked surprised, "Josh, you remember him?" Haymitch waves his fingers as if he couldn't forget, "Well he asked me to marry him."

Haymitch wrinkles his nose, "You said no, right?"

"Yeah, then we kind off ran off with a bunch of friends into the woods."

"You sound like your mother," He goes into a pantomime of Katniss, "Let's go live in the woods! I love the wild. Come on Gale, let's runaway. Oh but don't forget Peeta, because I hate making decisions…"

Prim pushes at his raised arms, "Okay I get it, my mom's a slut."

"I didn't say that," suddenly he seemed very defensive, "Your mother is a very strong woman and though I hate to admit it, I kind of feel she's my daughter. She loves your father a lot. All I meant was it took her a long time to figure that out." He lifts the bottle and takes another drink. He mumbles to himself and laughs, "Daughter, pft. I must be drunk."

"Well anyways," Prim continues, "One of our friends confessed the Capitol had taken his girlfriend. We purposely got captured so we could find her. Then the Capitol just let us go."

I notice how Prim leaves out the whole Maple part. Haymitch looks very confused, "They just let you go?"

"Yes. They just told us to go back home."

Haymitch presses his hands to his temples, "Ugh I can't think, these lights are too bright."

Prim gets up and turns a knob. The lights dim, "Better?"

He grunts. "They let you go? Why?"

"That's what I wanted to know. I thought, maybe, you could help us figure that out."

"Well you say they took your parents."

"Mine too," I interject.

"Well, it's one of three options," Prim and I both lean in out of curiosity, "They're either a) killing your parents as punishment b) Torturing your parents as punishment. Or c) they don't have time to deal with you because they're planning something; something big."

DUNDUNDUN! Reviews please. Hope Haymitch wasn't all out of character. He's a lot harder to write than I thought he would be.