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, self-harm. 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: I realized, scrolling through the previous chapters, that I've never done a single song from any of the Hunger Games soundtracks (HG, CF, or MJ1). So, I decided to do Yellow Flicker Beat next chapter (actually, that's not set in stone) because when it dropped I listened to it nonstop and I forgot how much I loved it! For now, though, a song from a playlist I found on Tumblr ^-^ Should I do all of the Trilogy songs from the soundtracks? Leave your opinion in the reviews, or drop a PM!
PS: Haymitch is probably OOC in this fic. That's because I really wanted to do something where Katniss goes extremely off her rocker before getting better, and with him actually being there and finding unorthodox ways to help her cope.
Song: All Our Endless Love by the Bird and the Bee feat. Matt Beringer
At first I was scared
The way these feelings started coming on
I couldn't breathe without you there
I couldn't see without you in my arms
After the war, Haymitch had been the only one there for her.
Katniss had been left alone entirely - with her sister gone, her mother and best friend run away, and no Peeta to ground her - and it had begun to take it's toll on her sanity. She would talk to herself in the dead of night, hold completely normal conversations. She's wander around the house, wearing Prim's withered flower crowns or hair ribbons, humming The Hanging Tree to herself mindlessly. She would crawl into closets and under sinks and behind dressers and get high.
They had all abandoned her to her own devices and that had been the most dangerous thing possible.
However, Haymitch had been there. When she'd hold conversations with herself, he'd watch her and murmur his own thoughts aloud with her. Katniss would stare blankly at him, wondering if she had three people in her head instead of two, and he'd smile softly at her and continue talking without let-up. Slowly but surely, she stopped talking to herself and began talking to him.
When she'd roam her empty house, humming, he'd sing with her - his voice is raspy and croaky and not good at all, but it reminds her that she's alive and that everything is very much real. He'd let her tie the ribbons in his too long hair, he'd let her take out insanity on him. Slowly but surely, the ribbons were tucked away in a small bin and she began to come to peace with her death.
And when she'd hide away to get high, he'd find her with a bottle clutched in his fist and crawl in with her. Sometimes the spaces would be small and she'd crawl into his lap. Sometimes they'd be particularly spacey and they'd stretch their legs out and switch crutches. Slowly but surely, the morphling bottles became less and less prominent around the house and Haymitch began to smell of burning wood and soap instead of whiskey and vomit.
And as the years went on, the conversations she had with him - that she'd originally believed she had with herself - turned into conversations she had with her swollen stomach, to the small infant growing inside. She'd talk to the baby about it's father, about what it's going to be like on the outside, about the big garden they had outside and about the geese and cat that it would inevitably play with. She'd talk to it about it's cousin Finley and it's other cousin Jolie, who too was on her way.
And Haymitch would smile in the middle of whatever he was doing and join her on the couch or the bed and hold conversations with them.
She'd twist ribbons and flower crowns into their daughters hair, humming the old District Twelve lullaby. She'd take her daughters long brown hair up into two pigtails with the pretty blue ribbons she'd once bought Prim and sing to her, listening to her child's high-pitched voice sing along with her happily.
And Haymitch would allow himself to be pulled down by Beatrix and allow her put his hair into two pigtails with blue ribbons.
And when the nights got long and the nightmares seemed endless, Katniss would scurry away from their child and him for days on end, getting high in Haymitch's old house and escaping her demons. When the days were too bad for her to just push forward, when the haze of morphling called her name with the voice of her sister, when the world was coming down upon her lungs and made it hard to breathe...
And he'd be there. He'd come with their child's hand in his and understanding in his eyes. He'd come and he'd pull her out of the darkness.
And when she'd ask why, why he'd stay, why did he not run away like so many before him had, he'd look her deep in the eyes and say:
"When I said stay alive, sweetheart, I never said you had to do it alone."
I am just blood, I am just blood
I'm just a heart that's beating up every second of your touch
I am just stars, I am just sky
I am falling into the rhythm of your endless love