Author's Note: Hope you are having a great day! Here's something to depress your soul with. I hope you like it and enjoy! :) Only 3 more chapters until this story can be marked as complete.

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.


What hadn't hit him in the past few months hit him full force now. The crumbled figure in the corner, scared to death and comparable to a sheet in both colour and thickness. His entire body seemed frozen. Snow wasn't much of a problem, luckily. Plutarch and a few of the others had already handcuffed him. They didn't even seem to mind her, except for a salvaged avox, Haymitch never learned the name of. He pointed to her, then looked at Plutarch and Haymitch for orders. Trying to talk was even harder than to process the situation. Somehow finding her almost angered him. He'd been so … satisfied with the thought of never meeting her again, at the thought of her being dead. He'd gone through whatever grief period for her and now looking at her barely alive, naked in the corner of the President's private bedroom, made everything come back, including the bottled up emotions from the time where he couldn't feel. Nothing had prepared him for this.

"Just focus on the President," he heard Plutarch say in a rushed voice. "Haymitch are you sleeping? We need to move on,"

"N-No," Haymitch stuttered. "Just go, I-I-I need to take … care … of this," It felt like the words stuck on every part of his chapped lips, causing him almost excruciating physical pain, not limited to his face, but slowly spreading to every inch of his body. Plutarch suddenly stopped his rushing for a moment and everything seemed to be still. The former gamemaker looked at the woman in the corner, where it was obvious Haymitch eyes had locked. Maybe he didn't recognize her, but somehow he got the point. He never said anything and Haymitch silently thanked him for that, for he wouldn't know how to answer.

"Alright, let's give Abernathy some space, let's go!" He shouted to the others and looked one final time at Haymitch. Well knowing that Coin would probably want to murder both of them they exchanged looks. She was never part of the rebellion, but she was also no longer part of the Capitol. When the last man of the little team left the room to get Snow locked up somewhere, he moved slowly forward. She didn't move, but her eyes shone in the dim light back at him, carefully examining every single one of his movements. He didn't expect her to talk or say anything. Somewhere in him he knew she really needed to get to a doctor – a head doctor too, probably. He was overwhelmed by uncertainty. He needed help. What should he do? She looked so alien to him now, bared and humiliated. There was nothing left of the bubbly façade, she so often had put on to mask her true feelings. She never lied, but she hid things. She was good at that, but not good enough to hide this. He wished he could hide from her right now, so she didn't need to see his expression of utterly despair.

"Effs," he said as he fell to his knees next to her. A sharp pain shot through him, clearing his mind in a second. She looked at him with wide eyes, red from crying, both black with bruises and with even darker circles from lack of sleep. She didn't blink. He couldn't even hear her breathe. He reached out to touch her cheek and when he did, she let out a frightened sound and suddenly she forced herself to push him away. It wasn't words and if he hadn't seen her tongue when she opened her mouth he'd have sworn she'd lost it.

"Effie it's me," he said trying to calm her down, when she went into a fit of desperation and curled up into a ball, letting out small outbursts of pain, from moving her wrecked body.

"Effie, stop, look at me, it's Haymitch, I'm not going to hurt you," He couldn't even try to fight the tears, now streaming down his face. Outside he heard shouts of still panicking Capitol citizens – probably also the rebels. He needed to get away from here. If there were more explosions and more shootings they'd risk getting caught in the crossfire.

"We need to get you out of here, I'm so sorry, Effs, I …" He tried to scoop her up, but she didn't make it easy for him to carry her, though she seemed light as a feather. When she finally spoke her first words to him, it sounded like she'd been screaming her lungs out for weeks.

"Hay … mitch," She seemed to calm down after getting it confirmed by her own voice, that it was in fact him. He put her on the President's bed for a second and stroked her hair, which hung dead and unwashed around her sunken face, before he tried to figure out a strategy. According to his watch he had around 2 hours to run on, before the hovercraft would leave from the meeting place. It'd taken about 30 minutes to get here. He figured it'd take about double the time now and with her. Then he'd have to add the much needed breaks, for he was certain she wouldn't be able to walk herself or even take the large amounts of stress from being carried.

"I'm going to get you out of here, you'll be alright," It took him a lot of effort to believe his own words, but he didn't see a way the situation could get any worse. To his horror, she shook her head and closed her eyes softly.

"Don't sleep, Effs. I need you here," She opened her eyes like suddenly waking from a nightmare, when he said the words. He wasn't a doctor, but he figured it wouldn't be good if she fell asleep.


It wasn't really hard to carry her, now that she seemed to have accepted it was him, but though he felt she tried to be quiet and not complain, he knew he was hurting her every time he ran a bit too fast or got a bit too careless. The sheet from the bed served as a temporary blanket for her, but even he could feel the cold hitting him through his jacket. He had to keep a very unsteady speed to avoid getting caught in some of the revolt still going on. He was clinging to walls, trying really hard to just get forward, trying even harder to ignore the fact that he felt the hand she wrapped around his neck loosening and become lank and dead.

And then they were there. He was afraid to believe it, when he saw the hovercraft. The last ten minutes his head had set the memory of her telling him that she loved him on repeat, like some sort of cruel joke. He didn't realize just how much energy he had spent on getting here until a healer took him by the shoulder and led him to the hospital room Coin had arranged on the hovercraft. The healer didn't even try to get him to let go, before he could put her on a clean bed, triggering a final pain induced sound from her.

"You'll be okay, Effs," He said and looked at her fully for the first time. He could see now why she wasn't able to walk, as her left foot seemed broken in every way possible. Plutarch had told him that this was a general problem with some of the dead prisoners they'd found and that he suspected it was something the guards did to mark the ones for the slaughter and make sure they didn't get away. Her groin area was stained with blood, even through the sheet he'd wrapped around her. So was he, he noticed when the haze left him and he allowed the healer to do her work. She didn't even ask who she was and Haymitch was glad. He didn't want to explain why he thought Effie Trinket was worthy of saving. He sunk deep down into a chair next to her, while the doctor, who his baffled brain faintly recognized as Katniss' mother, uncovered her wounds. He heard some shouts and Mrs Everdeen briefly stopped her examination to go check on the newcomers. While she was away Effie turned her head towards Haymitch and looked at him with a pained expression.

"Thank … you," she mouthed almost unable to talk without her body retracting due to the energy it took. He told himself he wouldn't cry with her watching, but it was far too late. For the first time in his life since the Capitol killed his family, he felt the need for revenge. He'd subsided it with alcohol for a long while, but when he saw her like this, one of their own, raped and bleeding, he wanted nothing more than to watch Katniss' arrow pierce Snow's heart.