Thank you so much for the reviews and love! Here it is: Part 2, the second and final chapter! Be warned: depressing, disturbing content is ahead.
Oh, and reading through Part 1 I just realized that I made a big mistake. Haymitch and Julia are standing together at the Reaping, when in the books the boys and the girls are separated. Whoops-hopefully that doesn't affect the general plot. Sorry!
Now on with the show!
There's a homecoming dinner at Haymitch's new house in the Victor's Village. The guests are Julia's family and the Mellarks. Haven had been invited, but she declined and retreated to her house on the far side of the village. They eat Capitol lamb stew and fresh hot bread sprinkled with rosemary. Julia holds his hand and rests her head on his shoulder. Haymitch's mother holds him and cries on him and kisses his cheek and he lets her. He finds it within himself to tease Roger and Hannah but does little talking beyond that. He just wants to appreciate what he had always taken for granted.
Julia's parents insist she has to leave, but Haymitch doesn't want her to. He stubbornly clings to her until she whispers in his ear, "I'll be back later tonight." There's a suggestive edge to her words that thrills him.
After the dinner party Haymitch huddles on his new sofa with Mom and Roger. They cuddle with her like they are toddlers again and afraid of thunderstorms.
His mother pulls him in close and kisses his hair. "I thought I was going to lose you," she murmurs. "You know, I think your father's spirit helped you."
Haymitch doesn't have the heart to tell her he doesn't believe in spirits.
Julia's whispered promise keeps Haymitch awake in his bed. He finds himself thinking about his father. He's hated him ever since he killed himself and left them, and his mother's belief changes nothing. Spirits aren't real, and his father was a coward. Haymitch owes nothing to him.
His reverie is interrupted when a rock hits his window. He gets up and looks down and sees Julia Millwater, looking pleased with herself.
He goes downstairs and lets her in through the front door and immediately envelops her in a passionate kiss.
Afterwards, they lay nude in his bed. Her head rests on his sweaty chest. She seems to take satisfaction in the steady lub-dub of his heart.
Haymitch stiffens when Julia runs a sleepy hand over his torso. "Careful," he pants. "My scar . . ."
"Sorry," she mumbles. Then her face splits into a wide smile. "I love you, Haymitch Abernathy."
"I love you too, sweetheart." (In those days, he could call her that without a trace of sarcasm.)
After another kiss, and a few more moments of silence, Haymitch asks, "What did you say about me when they interviewed you?"
"I told them how much I loved you and how I wanted you to come home safe more than anything. And I told them about how I'd made you promise to stay alive. And about my barrette. I figured I could tug at some heartstrings and at least help you in some way."
So that explained the uptick in sponsors. He already knew that the Capitol's boutiques had begun reproducing Julia's butterfly barrette; at the train station leaving, he'd seen them in the hair of many Capitol ladies.
"You sly fox," he laughs, and kisses her temple. "Marry me for real?"
In nonverbal affirmation, she climbs atop him and kisses him soundly. Haymitch's hand wanders down to her hip. Later on, he would remember thinking that he'll never be this happy ever again.
He would be right.
XXX
Punishment from a scorned and humiliated Capitol comes quickly. Haymitch has two days of reprieve until retribution hits him like the speeding tribute train.
The first terrible morning, Roger is the one who finds their mother dead in her bed, her body already cool to the touch. His screams of "Haymitch! Haymitch!" are high-pitched and anguished. Roger wears his emotions on his sleeve. Haymitch is completely stoic. She had only been 38, weary, but still young.
Poison, he would later all but know.
They bury her next to their father. After the funeral, Julia holds him and soothes him as he screams into where her hair and neck meet.
Haymitch is given two weeks to mourn his mother before they take Roger from him. One afternoon when he picks Roger up from school and asks him about his day, he says, "I won a medal for my marks today! The principal called me down to his office this morning." He reaches inside his pocket and brandishes the medal. Haymitch congratulates him, totally unsuspecting.
Haymitch would never know if the principal had given him a poisonous drink or even if the medal itself was toxic. By six o'clock that evening, Roger is vomiting and convulsing. Haymitch calls for the apothecary, but all Mr. Offee can tell him was that he had no idea what is wrong with the boy, and gives him morphling to ease his pain. Roger soon drifts into a deep sleep Mr. Offee calls a coma.
He is dead by morning, and Hannah is there holding his hand when he exhales for the last time. He is buried next to his mother in what is quickly becoming the Abernathy family plot. Julia comforts Haymitch once more.
"Why are they dying?" Haymitch sobs. He feels impossibly small.
Julia makes soft, soothing noises because she can't answer his question, and then they have sex. Now he is all alone in his house and he is afraid. "Stay with me," he begs, and she spends the night, tucked up against his chest. He'd fought for his mother and Roger and now they were gone. He tries not to think about the fact that he'd fought for Julia too.
A month later (perhaps the lull was to lure him into complacency), his worst fears are realized when he hears a pounding on his door, and more screams of "Haymitch!"
He opens the door to a hysterical Nora Millwater. "Haymitch, the Peacekeepers have taken Julia to the square!"
"What! Why?"
Instead of an answer, she takes his arm and they sprint to the square. A crowd has gathered. Julia is there, sandwiched between two Peacekeepers. When she sees him she begins to cry out to him.
"Julia!" Haymitch tries to make his way through, but he is being jostled and no one will move.
Pericles Darby, the head Peacekeeper, unfurls a paper and began reading that Julia has been charged with poaching (ridiculous, she had never been outside the district and had no idea how to use a bow or make traps), buying and selling at the Hob (she had never even set foot in the Hob), resisting arrest (okay, that had probably happened), and assaulting a Peacekeeper by spitting in his face (that too).
"In accordance with the laws of Panem," says Darby, "Julia Ann Millwater is hereby sentenced to a hundred lashes."
He hears someone yell "NO!" He realizes that person was himself. He attempts to struggle through the crowd, and this time it parts for him, but the Peacekeepers are quick. They wrestle him to the ground and start beating him before he has time to even come up with a plan. Haymitch resists, but he has nothing on their brawn and height. He finally stops fighting when they smash his head against the cobblestones and Haymitch sees stars.
Through his rapidly swelling eyes he can see that Mr. Millwater and Julia's brother Eli are receiving beatings of their own. He can hear the cracks of the whip and Julia's screams, which subside when she finally passes out. He screams with her, almost grateful he cannot get up and actually see her agony. And yet he keeps willing his legs to move and they cannot, and not just because of his injuries. A Peacekeeper holds his body down with his boot.
When the whipping is finally over the Peacekeepers order the crowd to disperse. Haymitch ignores them, ignores the pounding in his head and his missing teeth, and goes to the whipping post. Eli runs over as well. So does Klaus Mellark.
"I have a knife," Klaus says, and begins to cut through Julia's bonds. Haymitch cradles the parts of her that he can, his thoughts jumbled and messy. Her back resembles a hunk of raw meat, and her hair is matted with her own blood. Her breathing is shallow and when he feels for it, her pulse is weak. He cannot think or act, but he hears himself croak that they have to take her to the Offees'. When Klaus is done, Haymitch lifts her up like a groom carrying his bride. Eli, a stricken expression on his face, runs to his father, who is lying inert and unconscious on the ground. Mrs. Millwater is wailing.
Her eyes open halfway on the steps of the apothecary. He sees the flash of gray and feels a stirring of hope. He tells her not to worry as Mr. Offee takes her from him and carries her to a table to be worked on and readies his medicines and sutures. He tells her that everything will be okay. He finds himself rambling about marriage and Toasting and how he'l buy her anything and everything she wants, from Capitol wedding gowns to jewels, if she stays with him She raises a shaking, frail hand and brushes his jaw with her fingertips.
Mr. Offee works so hard to save her. Haymitch stays by her side as he applies salves and stitches. Julia senses his presence and begins squeezing his hand, but each squeeze gets more and more feeble until they stop completely.
She's gone.
"I'm sorry, son," Mr. Offee says. "She'd just lost too much blood."
There were no last whispered I love yous, like on TV. No goodbye kisses. Her eyes didn't close when she died. He knew this already from the Games but he wishes hers had. He wouldn't have had to see her eyes that were normally so full of feeling and fire glassy and empty.
No one can comfort him. Klaus and Arlo try. Hannah is in no condition to, so they just cry together. Haven makes a better attempt-she knows so much about loss. He's concentrating so hard on keeping his shit together at the funeral that he barely talks to the Millwaters. This slight contact still manages to break him.
I've lost everything and somehow, it is all my fault.
He thinks of the stunt he pulled with the force field. It had felt so clever at the time, so resourceful. He remembers how his teachers always said that he would regret being a smartass. They had been right.
I should be dead. Not them.
After the funeral he goes home and trashes his house. He screams and bawls and destroys his new furniture. He punches holes into the wall and rips the telephone out of its socket. He finds the red wine his mother bought for the dinner party and finishes off the bottle. It tastes terrible and makes him vomit but that's the least he deserves.
I'm a murderer.
He finally collapses into a quivering, teary heap and falls into a drunken sleep.
Well into the next morning, Haymitch wakes up with a hangover. He goes outside to breathe in fresh air, only to find an envelope on his doorstep. He opens it and reads. The letters blur together.
Dear Mr. Abernathy,
It saddened me greatly to be informed of the passing of your mother, brother, and girlfriend. Please accept my condolences.
Yours sincerely,
President Coriolanus Snow
Nearby is a single white, stinking rose. A reminder.
XXX
The Victory Tour simply adds to Haymitch's torture.
He is numb. He is unfeeling. He is a zombie. He performs his speeches robotically. He can process nothing but grief and pain and sorrow.
Alcohol ceases to taste terrible after awhile. It makes him forget and makes him sleep without nightmares. The nightmares are horrifying and gory and begin to plague him daily. Dead Mom, dead Roger, and most of all, dead Julia join the tributes in the arena.
He brings her barrette with him onto the train. Playing with it is really all he has the energy to do.
Haymitch loses interest in eating. Thetis begins having to take in his outfits. Roxana and Haven are worried, though Haven at least understands why.
After two weeks on the Tour another emotion begins to filter through: anger. Fury. How dare Snow take everything he cared about away from him? What he had pulled with the force field hadn't been meant to embarrass the Capitol, not entirely. He had wanted to survive most of all. Now survival just wasn't worth it.
Haven senses his new feelings and one day speaks to him in private. "You have every right to be enraged, but you cannot let the Capitol know your true feelings," she says. "They will come down on you even harder."
He takes her advice for a while, all the time wondering what else they could possibly take from him. (His dignity.)
One day in District 10 Haymitch is done biting back his bitterness. When one reporter asks him how his girlfriend is, he snaps.
"She's dead," he hisses. "And you can ask President Snow why."
Roxana tries to explain that it's nothing, that he's just drunk, that he didn't mean it. But Haymitch was completely sober, and the powers that be know it.
That night he is brought to the mayor's house and experiences his first sadistic client. It is his initiation into the world's oldest profession.
XXX
Life went on. Sort of.
Haymitch is haunted. Not by spirits, but by memories. Mom making delicious stew out of the katniss tubers he'd buy at the Hob, Mom comforting him when he had a bad dream as a kid, Mom's face when they were first reunited at the train station. Playing with Roger, teasing Roger, his brother's infectious laugh.
And Julia. Oh, Julia. He remembers the smell of her hair and the orange in her right eye. The feel of her lips and the softness of her skin. Her fire, her intensity, her beautiful voice and her smarts. The way it would feel when they made love. How it felt afterwards, when she would put her ear to his chest and be relieved by the sound of his heart beating when she had been so sure it would stop. It all makes him cry until he feels drained. He avoids the Millwaters now, and they avoid him. The pain is too great, and he's sure that Mr. Millwater blames him for her death.
The first client in 10 is the first of many. Some are gentle, some are cruel, and some just want to be loved by a handsome Victor. Haymitch hates them all, and is relieved when he's finally too drunk and scruffy for anyone to want him to be their whore anymore.
Alcohol is his refuge. Any alcohol. Wine, whiskey, beer, the white liquor the Hob offers. It saves him from the nightmares and the horror of mentoring child after child to their death.
He becomes friends with Haven Arrowsmith and they weather the pain together. Even though she is far older than him he lets her nestle her head in the crook of his neck when their tributes die. As for him, he cannot tear his eyes away. The faces of those children become burned in his memory, and become part of the host of spirits who stalk his dreams.
When Janie Nettles is fifteen, she is Reaped. Haymitch wants to bring her home so badly that his heart aches. He feels sorry for the boy him and Haven and practically ignoring, but seeing Janie being crowned Victor becomes his obsession.
One night after everyone has gone to bed, Haymitch is drunkenly wandering the train when he comes across Haven watching an old Hunger Games video. It's the scotch that makes him slur, "What'd you ever do to piss Snow off?"
Her eyes are huge with unshed tears when she finally turns to look at him. "I fought him when he raped me."
There are twelve tributes to go when the boy from District 4 slits Janie's throat.
Since the boy died in the bloodbath, they are allowed to return home early to bury the children in the Tributes' Cemetery. Janie is buried in the same grave as Robin and Anna, to save space.
Two days later Haymitch decides to go check on Haven. Her house is eerily silent and when he works up the nerve to invade her space and go upstairs, he finds her dead in her bed, an empty bottle of sleeping pills on the nightstand.
Haymitch has to mentor alone. Seeing kids killed over and over hurts just the same as it did the first time his tribute died. But he knows the dead are the lucky ones. It's the Victors who do not have the odds in their favor.
Snow has a long memory and knows how to hold a grudge. A year after Janie, his first Games alone, his cousin Verity is Reaped. Then for a particularly gruesome period his other cousins, who were just toddling when he became a Victor, are all Reaped as soon as they turn 12, year after year. He tries to help them but they're undernourished and fare poorly at combat. He tries to get them sponsors but no Capitol bigwig wants to sponsor some scrawny Seam kids. Of course, they all die. Haymitch avoids their parents, out of guilt and because he doesn't want Snow to get the impression he loves his aunts and uncles deeply.
Sometimes, he wonders why Snow doesn't just kill him, even though he already knows the answer. Death is the greatest gift.
He begins sleeping with a knife, just in case. He won't object to death if Snow sends people from the Capitol to kill him, but he doesn't want it to go around that Haymitch Abernathy went down without a fight.
Haymitch remains friends with the Mellarks. When Arlo dies, Klaus takes over the bakery and soon marries Izzy Cartwright. Hannah is never the same after Roger dies, but she marries Izzy's brother Noah, the goat farmer. Klaus is kind and always delivers him bread and cakes and pastries, sometimes free of charge. Hannah finds it too painful to talk to him, but every year he receives goat cheese and milk on his birthday, along with a short letter. In return, her daughter Delly and Klaus' boys are the only kids in 12 Haymitch isn't rude to, on the occasions he ventures out of the Victor's Village.
It devastates him, later on, when they are both killed in the firebombing.
Once a year, Haymitch goes to the graveyards. First to the Tributes' Cemetery, which is on the outskirts of the Village. He stops briefly at Markus' grave, and even Goldilocks Hubbert's. He pays brief respects at Valley Payne's. He spends a long time at Maysilee Donner's, telling her all the things that he had never gotten to say to her in the arena, such as that he thought she was the bravest girl he ever knew. He also lingers where Anna, Robin, and Janie are buried. He makes sure to stop at each grave of his tributes, even if he had hated them in life. In the very vacant Victors' Cemetery, he talks for a while to Haven's headstone. He does miss her.
He moves on to the graveyard for ordinary citizens. It is much more difficult to breathe here. He skips past his father's grave and goes to his mother and brother's. He lays down his flowers and has a good cry. Then he steels himself.
Julia's grave is in the "M" section of the graveyard. He does for her what he had hoped she would do for him-he lays down flowers, and he cleans away the dead leaves. He tells her how much he misses her. He tells her that he loves her and always will. He's already decided that he'll never marry or even find another girl, for fear of her being killed or their children being Reaped, so his heart will always belong to her. He kisses the headstone and is grateful he memorized the feel of her lips so long ago. Tears come unbidden.
He has to leave, before the pain overwhelms him.
XXX
Haymitch likes the boy better because he reminds him of Julia.
While it was true that he is probably biased because Peeta is Klaus' son, and because he resembles his grandfather so much, he also reminds him so much of his Julia that it hurts. His quiet loyalty. The way he could surprise you with his fierceness. His intelligence. The girl, Katniss, is too much like him, he realizes, unfriendly and cold.
He finally empathizes with his handlers' exasperation with his snappishness, all those years ago. Ungrateful little bitch. Can't she see that he just wants to help her stay alive?
The Rebellion is the only thing that sustains him. Plutarch gives him an observer's account of Katniss' attack on the Gamemakers, and informs him that they have a spitfire on their hands, a perfect candidate to be a catalyst. Resistance could finally be sparked, after all these years of scheming and dreaming. Haymitch just wants to live to see the day when he doesn't have to take kids to the Capitol like pigs for slaughter anymore. And the day when Snow's head is put on a pike for all to see.
When they pull that stunt to get them both lifted out of the arena, Haymitch wants to laugh and he wants to cry. His tributes won. He did not have to see them die. He will not see them die over and over again in his dreams. But this would surely mean the death of everyone they loved.
He wants to warn them but there's only so much he can say without facing repercussions himself. After their loved ones die, they will surely become highly sought after. Women and men alike were already swooning after Peeta, with his innocent looks and easy charisma. And who wouldn't want a piece of the Girl on Fire?
Haymitch comforts himself by focusing on the Rebellion. It becomes his obsession. Seneca Crane's execution causes Plutarch Heavensbee to be elevated to Head Gamemaker. The pieces are falling into place. Haymitch already knows the kids will be going back into the arena-Plutarch had informed him that Snow is rewriting the 75th Quarter Quell so Victors would have to be Reaped and Katniss would be forced to go back, and he knows that Peeta would certainly volunteer for him if his name is drawn. He will get them out and take them to 13 and then Snow could get his comeuppance.
Maybe this time, he would actually be able to save the people he loved.
XXX
"I miss Prim," Katniss says with a slight quaver to her voice.
Haymitch is sitting in her kitchen in the Victors' Village while she prepares lunch. Peeta is at the rebuilt bakery, and their two year old daughter Fiona is sitting on the floor, playing with Capitol toys.
It is a bad day for her, and on bad days when Peeta is away she talks to Haymitch. Haymitch is an expert on loss and grief and he is the perfect confidant.
"I know, sweetheart. I miss her too," he says, and he isn't lying. He misses her because Katniss misses her and it causes her so much anguish.
"I miss my mom."
"So do I," Haymitch says. His mother would have turned seventy-two a few days before.
"I miss my dad," she says, and he knows it's a really bad day.
Panem has been reclaimed. President Paylor has torn down the arenas and built memorials to the dead children in their stead. Haymitch had sobered up in order to help dedicate the one to the District 12 tributes. There is no more Hunger Games. There is no more tyrannical Capitol. District 12 is rebuilding. But the pain remains and it probably always will. It has ebbed, sure, but like any scar it will last forever.
He soothes her the best he can and plays with Fiona, who calls him Uncle Haymitch. Peeta comes home from the bakery and Haymitch decides it's okay for him to leave. He feeds his geese and then leaves the village.
He goes to the graveyard. The stones were destroyed in the firebombing, but under his direction they were restored. He says happy birthday to his Mom and hi to Roger. Then he goes to Julia.
He still tells her he misses her. He still tells her that he loves her. He still cries. But he finds himself able to leave on his own accord.
XXX
"Happy birthday, sweetheart," he says as he gives her the small pink parcel.
Fiona Mellark is twelve today. In years past, she would have had to sign up for the Reaping. Instead, her parents are throwing her a party at their house. The guests include Greasy Sae, her granddaughter Kalindy, Delly Cartwright and her family, Annie Cresta and her teenage son Finnick, and even Katniss' mother. Her younger brother Quillan steals the spotlight as usual with the quick joking wit he inherited from his father. Peeta and Katniss look genuinely happy. They have for a while now.
Fiona opens her gift and coos when she lifts out a silver, butterfly-shaped barrette. "It's so pretty!" she cries. "Thanks, Uncle Haymitch!"
They cut the cake, a delicious red velvet confection Peeta baked himself. Katniss corners him. "Haymitch, you didn't have to give Fiona that. I know how important it is to you."
"I did have to," he corrects her. The barrette had been sitting in his nightstand drawer for years, going to waste. "Julia would have wanted her to have it. She would have loved her."
Haymitch never forgets her. He misses her. He always loves her.
But now, every time Fiona and Quillan barge into his house to see their uncle and Fiona wears the barrette in her hair, he is reminded to never give up.
And he never will be tempted to again.
Thank you for reading! Reviews are like silver parachutes. And I'd like feedback on one thing: I'm tempted to write a significantly more lighthearted one-shot that will be a companion piece to this story. Is anyone interested?