Authors Note: So chapter two. I know they aren't as long as I would like them to be, but I tend to see where it fits to cut the story off without making those irritating "now-I-don't-have-to-read-next-chapter"-thingy-majiggys. I'm happy you guys gave such great response so I hope I don't disappoint you. It's a little long in the start, I admit, but I wanted to have the backstory there for later. The action begins in next chapter I guess (if you can call it action). Enjoy!

This story may be seen as triggering to people dealing or having dealt with self injury, suicide or depression. Rated M for descriptive violence and very dark themes.


"May the odds be ever in your favour," Her little catchphrase. Haymitch sunk down in his chair as he watched her stand in front of the crowd for the third time. They knew her by now. She was just the new instalment of horror dressed in bright fashion. Sometimes he thought of Effie Trinket, because she was the only one that seemed to care about him anymore. To 12 he was some kind of myth, who sometimes walked into town to get his alcohol and kept out of the way otherwise. Few talked to him. Sometimes he thought of her because she just popped into his mind. The quiet reserved laughter and the pale skin. It wasn't something he welcomed, because after all he still really wanted to hate her, but it was kind of hard when he found that she even sent him a gift for his birthday. Maybe that was just something they did in the Capitol, but he couldn't help but think that the cognac bottle in the gift basket was his favourite year and his favourite brand. It was almost too coincidental to be sweet of her. But then again, she was very observant. He didn't listen to her talk anymore, he'd learned through practice and drinking to tune her out, but he heard the names being called. He knew the last name of the boy, but he couldn't put a finger on who it belonged to. He also wouldn't care. Just as he wouldn't care about Effie Trinket sending him a present. Mayor Undersee looked at him funny and he realized he was supposed to be going of stage with the escort in the high heels now. He did it. Well, at least there was free booze on the train.


She yelled at him for not doing anything. He reminded her, that the tributes from 12 were weak and small compared to the other kids in there. She yelled some more, but he couldn't really get himself to care for her words, no matter the volume they came to him.

"Get those children some sponsors! She's pretty, she's smart, she eats with utensils, how hard can it be?" she demanded of him, probably well knowing she was breaking those precious rules from the first day she met Haymitch. He didn't care for it, just leaned back in the chair and put the glass to his lips. Something about this entertained him even though she really pushed his buttons. The children would die. No doubt about it. He hoped they enjoyed this train ride, because it was going to be the last thing they ever experienced in a world where some sort of freedom was mimicked.

Her next comment hit him, though. It broke every rule he had ever told her about.

"Haymitch, you can't let your own Games haunt you forever like this, now it's your job to stop being an … an asshole and start doing something to help them!" The breach in her speaking pattern, the dirty word slipping through her lips all made something inside him burn with hate. She wasn't going to stand there in her high heels and tell him how to deal with anything. So he hit her. The first time with so much power she fell to the floor. Second time he hesitated, seeing the tears well in her eyes, but he let a second bruise form next to the first one on her cheek and over her nose, which had started bleeding quite badly. The third hit never happened as he stopped himself realizing what he was doing. She lay sobbing on her knees holding her silk sleeve to her bleeding nose. The only thing Haymitch really thought about was that he shouldn't have hit her in the face, where it was visible.

"You want to hear about my games?" He heard himself say to her so harshly he would probably have stopped anybody else from talking to her that way. It wasn't him speaking, but neither was it the good amount of alcohol in his system. No the creature speaking to the frightened escort was a personification of all those moments where he had been so near tears of rage and fright, that he'd almost burst. He'd held all that in until now. Effie Trinket just happened to be in the same room.

"I killed people, Trinket. You don't understand it because all you've done is second hand murder, when you lead those kids. Kids like me, back then. To the reaping. You don't get what it feels like to have everything taken away, even though you thought you had nothing,"

She crawled away from him, doing very little to pretend to be interested in his mad monologue. He could hear her panicking, maybe even considering striking back at him. She'd hit him a few times, but her hits where like a playful reminder from a child. Haymitch knew he'd hurt her, maybe more than she realized herself.

"I could kill you right now if I wanted to," He said slowly and stared violently into her eyes, forcing her to lock eyes with him. The make-up she'd caked on for the reaping where running down her cheeks revealing her own very pale skin underneath the dark make-up seemingly in fashion this year. For a short moment he actually thought about killing her. Twisting her dainty neck and letting her be. He could surely be executed for that. Then reality hit him again as he heard a tiny sound of absolute fear. He'd heard it before. Something a woman only allows herself to do as a final resort, resulting in nothing. His mom had made the same sound when the peace keepers broke down the door and took her away to kill her. It was the sound of surrender.

He left the room, left her and called a servant to tend to her.


The tributes actually hung on quite a while that year, making it even more awkward for him to stay at the training centre, seeing her every day. She never mentioned the episode on the train and she had her nose fixed. It had been broken. He knew it. She talked to him as always, complaining about the weather or the rough arena, discussing strategies. She didn't say anything about mentoring, sponsors or anything else, that might be sensitive though and after her sixth evaluation of the game makers' choice of water source he actually kind of missed her intolerable yelling, but he couldn't get himself to criticize her. In the few sober moments he felt guilty about ever laying a hand on her. In a few of his darkest drunk moments he regret not killing her. Mostly he just felt miserable and stupid. He had actually expected her to turn him in, telling some branch of police-unit of the assault on her and get him arrested or something, but absolutely nothing happened, which to him was even worse than if she'd hit him back and ripped out his eyes or something. On the bottom line he'd hurt a woman, who may or may not be innocent, but in all ways weak and defenceless in the moment he'd done it.

"Was that Irene?" Effie woke up at the sound of the cannon. Haymitch almost fell out of the chair he'd been sitting in. His face flushed with embarrassment, when he realized he'd been staring at her the past 30 minutes instead of the screen where their female tribute was running towards the Cornucopia, chased by a district 5 tribute with a massive sword. The picture on the screen right now was not Irene, nor was it the district 5 boy chasing her. It was a suicide. They both knew it, because the game makers didn't televise it right away. Suicide wasn't good entertainment and even though everybody knew, no one talked about it. Except maybe in the districts. Effie put on her best smile and looked at Haymitch while the anthem played and showed the face of a young girl from 7.

"Haymitch… Can I – Can I ask you a question?" Effie asked with a tiny voice as her eyes darted from him and began reflecting the girl's face, while the commentators discussed the odds for the rest of the games, following her death. Haymitch didn't really want to talk to her, but he nodded and took a sip from the bottle in his hand. He had another realization that while he'd been looking at the sleeping escort he hadn't even been drinking.

"I know I'm not supposed to talk about it… I'm sorry, but… Sometimes my friends ask me what I'd do if I were in the games. I never reply to them, because I think… I think I'd do the same as Melissa there, only much sooner,"

"That isn't a question, Trinks," Haymitch growled, though he was curious to hear what she had to say.

"Did you ever-"

"No," He cut her off.

"Why not?" She was crossing a line now and he felt a slight pain in his stomach thinking about his 'why', which had shown to be indifferent for what happened shortly after.

"I used to have something to fight for," He just said conclusively. She wasn't stupid enough to ask more questions. She just nodded and looked at him for a few moments before she got up from the sofa and got herself a glass of water from the bathroom. He saw her hands trembling as she sat it on the glass table in front of her. It was weird of her to not just call a servant, but he suspected she didn't really need to quench her thirst, but more so needed to look herself in the eyes after baring a part of her for him. Took her quite a while as well. It was interesting, Effie Trinket doing this, when she couldn't even use his first name, when she wasn't mad at him and her tongue slipped.

Their tributes both died over the course of the next three days.