Warning: These one-shots feature heavy subjects, including alcoholism, drug abuse, and torture... so far. Now adding: depression, cheating. I'll add more as the story wears on, just in case.

AN: Credit goes to HannahSongla for the story idea. Please go check out her Hayniss story similar to this - Sweetheart. Credit goes to Suzanne Collins for the verse and the characters. I don't really own anything but the text of these one-shots. And no, that doesn't mean the song lyrics. Enjoy c:

Song: No Time Has Passed by Donovan Woods

No Time Has Passed

Gunshots sound,
Over hardened city ground,
And when you come, I call
Like no time has passed at all

It's one in the morning when she calls him, sobbing like a lunatic and slurring her speech. He curls up around her pillow and a cold bottle of gin and listens to her cry, then talk, then breathe. He listens as she begins to choke on her apologies, and he nods - even though she can't see him - when she begins to talk about 'coming home'. He let's her tell spin her web of drunken lies and confess her sins to him because that's the only thing he can do for her, and he wants to help her. He falls asleep to the sound of her nightmares tucked against his chin.

When he wakes up, the line is dead, and the bottle of gin is spilt. He doesn't cry then.

~.x.~

He arrives in the Capitol two weeks later, nothing in his hands but a case of Ripper's finest, flowers, and chocolates. He's being romantic, damn him to hell. He's trying to help her, trying to reach out her before their relationship falls apart. He's not gonna let her slip through his fingers anymore, he promises himself. She doesn't know how hard he's trying but that's okay, because he'll try until she sees and then she'll return to his bed.

He knocks and prepares four thousand apologies in his head. None of them seem right. That's okay, he'll come up with something.

The boy with the blue eyes and the small that can light up the stars opens the door, confusion written all over his face. She stands behind him, her wet and dark curls spilling over her shoulders and her eyes wide with surprise and sadness. That's okay, he'll be fine. He doesn't need her, does he? He does, but he won't worry about that right now. He needs a drink.

He drops everything but the liquor and storms off, almost blind with alcohol before he can reach the train station. He doesn't listen to her screams for him to return. He doesn't turn when he hears her tripping over her feet to get to him. He doesn't let her break his resolve again. He doesn't answer when she calls him. Nor does he answer the next fifty times. He lets her have her boy with the bread, the boy that can hand her the moon, the boy with the world on his shoulders. He falls asleep angry, damning her to every hell known to man. He falls asleep with the pains of a breaking heart, he falls asleep still madly in love with her.

He wakes up and pretends the spots on his pillow aren't from tears.

~.x.~

She tries to call him. She tries to apologize. She tries to explain. He doesn't answer. She begins to worry.

Effie is in town, she thinks desperately, her fingers shaking as she fumbles again for the phone. The sleeping form of the boy with the muscular physique and the damaged mind twitches, but she doesn't bother leaving the room. She calls Effie. Asks her to go check on him. make sure that he doesn't anything stupid - the thought of him hanging dead in his bedroom gets her to sobbing. She pleads faster, her tongue tripping over its words to form a plea. Begs her to make sure he's okay, just to make sure he's alive. Anything.

Effie calls back thirty minutes later, her voice weak and her anger clear as she explains that he is fine. That he's alive. That he's depressed. That he's just broken. She breathes a sigh of relief and almost cries, happy that he's okay. Overwhelmed with joy, in fact. She's ready to drop everything and go to him, to walk through a million miles of glass, to grovel on her hands and knees for forgiveness. She's ready to commit to him and only him. Effie asks her to stay where she is, explains that the last things he needs right now is for old wounds to be reopened. Effie asks her to give him time, to wait awhile, just a little bit. She fights this at first, but Effie wasn't an escort for ten years for no reason. She eventually obeys.

She obeys for approximately three years, seven months, one week and two days.

~.x.~

She returns when she's twenty-one with some of the Capitol's best white liquor clutched in her fist and a smile on her face so big that her cheeks begin to hurt. She asks around, asking where he's staying now, and all point in direction of Victor's Village - happily. She thinks they're happy because she's reuniting with her lost love. They're only happy because they think the man and his protégé are going to make up. It doesn't matter right now. She almost skips, dropping by Peeta's old bakery - a kid named Gregory serves her, and he calls to his mother and father to meet the Katniss Everdeen - to pick up a rum cake to celebrate. The bakery owners give it to her free, in thanks for everything she did for the country. Her smile almost falters. Her stomach twists and ties, knots itself into tiny balls as she makes the way up the pavement to Victor's Village, ready for him to welcome her into his arms with a forgiving smile. Well, not quite. But she's ready to fix things.

She drops everything when she sees him in the yard, a child no older than two cradled in his lap, all curly dark locks and wide blue eyes. He snuggles against his son, kisses his forehead and helping him arrange and rearrange his blocks with a wide smile. The boy wriggles and claps in his father's lap. She almost screams when she sees Effie, toddling out of the house with lemonade in her hands and baby fat on her hips, another child obviously in the making. Effie smiles and laughs, calling out to her boys with something like mirth.

She calls to him too, the pain wrapped around her chest making it hard to choke out his name.

He looks up, and his jaw drops. The child looks up as well, his brow furrowed into a frown. He says something to his father, but neither she nor he listen. Effie drops the lemonade, her jaw unhinged just like his. The sound of glass breaking drowns out everything else. She becomes dizzy. He lifts the child from his lap and stumbles over to her. It seems as if they're drunk, drunk on something that cannot be taken but only felt.

She falls into his arms and he holds her, pressing her against his chest and fighting desperately to keep the rekindling in his soul down.

"I'm sorry," she whimpers, cupping his face. Her nails are short and bitten, he notices. He tries to notice everything but the sadness in her eyes, the slight hollow of her cheeks, the too red tar on her lips that he knows is for him. "I'm sorry. Come home. I'm sorry."

"I'm not," he replies. She forces him to look at her, and her eyes tell the story of a billion men lost at war. Her eyes tell the story of a sad woman with nothing else in her life but her drunken mentor and fucked up ex. Her eyes tell the story of someone who was trying to come home. He didn't dare let her do this to him again. He looked away.. "I'm happy."

"Please," she begs, her voice cracking.

"Katniss-" Effie starts, panic in her own voice rising.

"Pa," the child whines, obviously displeased at the lack of attention. Or the strange lady with the long dark hair and the red lips that was hugging his daddy way too hard.

"I can't," he says again, ignoring both his wife and child. She shakes her head.

"Please."

"Katniss!" The world comes to a stop. She presses her lips against his, desperate for him to remember. She kisses him with all the fiery passion and intensity that they once possessed. She makes sure he remembers every longing glance, every touch in the night, every single memory that he has of her, with her. They're infinite. They have a million and one years ahead of them, they're inseparable. For a moment, she thinks she has him.

But then he pulls away and wipes at his mouth desperately. He kisses his wife - making sure to keep his eyes open and look at her, because damnit Katniss, he's married - and picks up his son and storms off. The sound of the door slamming resonates through the streets, and other families peek out of their houses to see the commotion.

And suddenly everything is black and cold for her.

He was just a drunken outlaw
I was just a stable hand
If I was gonna step in baby
I needed to be twice the man

AN: To explain why I believe this one shot explains this song perfectly. The lyrics "He was just a drunken outlaw, I was just a stable hand" etc are actually from Katniss' point of view, speaking of Effie. In the song, the man is speaking of his girl's second man, so I used this song to explain Effie and Katniss. Effie isn't all that really - she nags, she wears too much make-up, she's Capitolite, etc. But to Katniss, she's not all that either. She's still partially in love with Peeta, she's damaged, etc. Her saying "if I was gonna step in baby, I needed to be twice the man" is like 'If I was going to love you, I needed to wait and make sure that I was whole and put together, just for you."

And you can obviously see why I think this song is Hayniss.