Warning: These one-shots feature heavy subjects, including alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide and torture... so far. Now adding: depression, cheating, heartbreak, underage, implied prostitution, suicidal thoughts, someone having acid thrown on them, smut, implied rape/non-con. I'll add more as the story wears on, just in case.

Disclaimer: 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 or the playlist. Enjoy c:

AN: Cliché tumblr AUs meets Panem. Also, if anyone wants to do a Hayniss week with me, I'd like to collab on that. I have a couple of prompts that I'd love to write and love to read. Please, drop a PM or a review telling me what you think of this idea. And sorry to HannahSongla for using a Lana song ;-;

Also, please, my friend HestiaAbnegation11 has a 28/28 (The Capitol and District 13 are included) up and she's in need of more authors. Please, go and check out her profile for the story and the information, and submit a tribute! It'd be great to work with you guys ~^~

Song: Born To Die by Lana Del Rey

Born To Die

Come take a walk on the wild side
Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain
You like your girls insane
Choose your last words
This is the last time

Haymitch Abernathy decided that he liked monochrome. Not that he'd had much of a choice in the matter anyway - since birth, he'd seen nothing but hues of grays, whites, and blacks. He didn't think he had a favorite color beside gray. Occasionally, he'd see glimpses - quick dull yellows or reds when he squeezed his eyes shut too hard - but he'd never really seen color. He'd never met the one person that would make his world brighten - if he had, he wouldn't be stuck with the monotony of black every time he went to pick out an outfit or the piercing white of his brother's skin.

Not that he cared. Haymitch wasn't one for pettiness - and finding a soul mate to him, was petty. Love didn't put bread in his brother's stomach or keep his mother warm by the fireplace. Love didn't feed that one mangy goose in the backyard that provided them with breakfast. Love was a luxury, not a necessity. So Haymitch did what was needed to provide for his little brother and his mother, and that was it. It was squashed. No fantasizing about what color his hair really was or how gorgeous those flowers he put in his girlfriend's hair - she wasn't the one, but they both knew that it was improbable to find their soul mate so they were content together - really were.

He told himself that he didn't care if he couldn't really see just how beautiful Mabel looked in that dress his ma sewed for her.

~.H&K.~

Only one person who went into the arena had been able to see in full color.

It's a good thing that Haymitch can't see the arena, and a bad thing all the same. The beauty would've been overwhelming, he supposes - even in black and white, it was a lot for him to take in. He nearly eats some of the plants that seem familiar - he can't tell, damnit, he can't tell - but then he watches one of the non-deadly squirrels explode after a nibble and he tosses it away.

It's hard in an arena that's meant for beauty - color is how you survive in the woods, Haymitch knows from the Everdeen and the Hawthorne boys with the girlfriends. But he makes it to the top eight with the pretty white-haired sweetshop girl from town and he decides to use the colorlessness of his eyesight to his advantage. He doesn't trust anything too dark, slapping away the cool black mushroom that Maysilee offers and practically stomping the brains out of a crow that comes to peck for corn and seeds. Haymitch learns not to trust any animal too bright - they're dangerous, ferocious, and deadly. Haymitch knows that real squirrels have a sort of grayish tint to their fur, not the sickly white that the flesh-eating ones possess.

He wonders if the Gamemakers do it on purpose when Maysilee's blood is too dark but the pink fucking birds are the right shade of gray. He wonders if the Gamemakers set it up when he looks down at his intestines and realize that they're too dark but the girl has pretty gray eyes.

He wins with spotted black in the corners of his eyes.

~.H&K.~

By the time the seventy-fourth Hunger Games comes around, Haymitch has long since accepted that he'll never see color in his life. It wasn't unheard of - he knew his mother had only seen color for ten years of her life before his father died, and he knew that the previous Mayor had never wed or seen color either - and he had been eighty-two.

Besides, it's not like he tries to find his soul mate. He'd drowned himself in dark hues of bottled liquid since Ripper decided to start selling to him. He hadn't bothered trying to see the color of the world, he had been cooped up in his black and white house for his entire life, only venturing to the Capitol yearly to deliver their sheep for slaughter and get some of the good liquors. He'd never bothered courting anyone - not even briefly, on his Victory Tour, when he really had the chance to find his soul mate - he'd decided it wasn't worth it if Barley couldn't do it.

This year's girl is sixteen with a permanent scowl on her face, a fierce look about her that says nothing but 'win'. Haymitch wonders if he's gotten himself a Career - volunteer and all. The boy is sixteen too, and he's got a soft, determined look about his features.

His hair looks white, and Haymitch knows he's a merchant. He tries not think of Maysilee, or the same soft determined look on her face - the look that only came with innocents who were scared of a battle but hellbent on not losing. He tries not to think of himself or his permanent scowl - tries not to think of his little brother and mother back home, his dead father, like the girl.

He passes out drunk waiting to be hauled out during goodbyes.

He tries not wonder what color her dress is.

~.H&K.~

Haymitch realizes the second that her knife jabs between his fingers that he's scared for them. It's why he's prolonged mentoring them, why he's denying them the assistance that they need. He doesn't want either of them - especially the girl, fuck him for thinking it - to lead the colorless - figuratively and literally - lives. Filled with self-deprecation and what ifs - what if I'd gotten us both out, what if I'd never let her walk away, what if I'd won the right way.

He tells himself that she won't make it far and neither will he. He knocks back a shot of spiked tea and pretends to care.

Her knife lodges between the two panels and he knows they've screwed him over.

~.H&K.~

Cinna's a friend's son and a god with fabrics, so Haymitch curses him to hell and back for making her so enthralling. Haymitch can't see the flames of either of their outfits, but for some reason he's captivated with the idea. No more trashy coal miner's outfits or coal dust in unsavory areas. District 12 tributes finally meant something to those freaks in the stands.

He wonders why he's not surprised when she brushes his arm and his world lights up.

Her eyes widen and she stares down at her hands, before blinking and looking around. Haymitch grabs her arm and leans in close, smelling the lavender on her skin.

"Meet me on the roof," he whispers, before pulling away and returning to the conversation. Everyone had been so busy ooing and aahing over the performance that they hadn't noticed the little exchange. Katniss stares at him like a fish out of a water, but it's so like her that no one notices a thing.

~.H&K.~

"You're acting like it's a bad thing that we're soul mates."

"Maybe it is."

"Go ahead then! Repress this... whatever it is! But I can see color, and that's really going to help me in that goddamned arena and well, I'm glad I met my soul mate before I died. Even if it is just you."

"You don't-"

"I do mean it."

"This is bad. I can't... fall in love, I guess, and lose someone again."

"Who said anything about love?"

"Soul mates fall in love. That's what's supposed to happen, you know?"

"You wouldn't know though, would you?"

~.H&K.~

Haymitch decides that he deserves to be loved the first time she kisses his cheek and wraps her arm around his neck. It's the night of the Training Scores, and while he hated to admit it, he'd been avoiding her a bit. The whole new soul mate thing had shaken him, not to mention that his soul mate was not only his tribute but a girl a little less than half his age. Of course he'd talked to her briefly, but always in the presence of another - Peeta, Effie, or even Cinna and Portia - and always in the context of mentoring. And she'd been doing it too, avoiding him. Skipping breakfast and lunch simply because he was in the dining room, or rather, just eating in her bedroom.

It wasn't that hard either - whenever he felt the need to get out of the penthouse, he go about the city - ogling the pretty colors of the Capitol. He figures that that would never get old, now that they knew what it looked like.

But when she strikes an eleven in the scores, and they both genuinely smile at each other for the first time, he knows that he just can't avoid her anymore. She must think the same because she throws herself into his arms and kisses his cheek. His arms instinctively circle her waist, holding her in place for a brief moment. Twenty-four years of celibacy didn't kill instinct.

It's so unlike her that it catches everyone off guard.

She blushes fiercely and pulls away from him, but Haymitch catches her eyes and he gets stuck.

"It's him?" Peeta's voice faintly asks, disbelief and hurt in that sugar sweet voice of is. If he'd been paying attention to anything else, he would have been hurt for the boy - apologetic even, at the idea of taking his girl away. But Haymitch is focused on the gorgeous gray of her eyes, and how he seems to drown inside of them.

Yes. Haymitch Abernathy decided that he very much liked monochrome.

Don't make me sad
Don't make me cry
Sometimes love is not enough
The road gets tough
I don't know why