75 I.
Without hesitation, he reads, "On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors.
Haymitch stares at the television flickering in his otherwise unlit house. There must still be sound coming from it, but he can't hear anything other than the rushing of blood in his ears.
"He knows…" he whispers quietly under his breath.
Johanna stares at her television silently, fiercely gripping one arm of her couch, her mind whirling with a thousand unfinished thoughts.
"He knows," she grits out between clenched teeth.
Dazed, she walks over to the dark wood bar and pulls out a slender necked bottle of brown liquor. She twists the cap off, continuing to walk through her living room, and throws it carelessly on to her otherwise clean floor. She continues to walk slowly through her house, occasionally taking sips from the bottle that is dangling from her fingers.
She has to give President Snow credit for finding such an elegant way to get rid of all of them, and with all of Panem watching and cheering along. And without even needing to rig the reaping for either her or Katniss. She shakes her head in grudging admiration.
She walks up to the second bedroom, a room that she almost never enters, and looks thoughtfully at the beautiful hardwood chairs that are in there, sitting on either side of a small table against the wall. She sits carefully down in one of them, placing the bottle on the table next to her. She runs her hands down the smooth curve of the armrests and back up, the wood warm and liquid under her hands. She takes another long drink from the bottle. The chair conforms perfectly to her body. She drinks again, her mind going just a little fuzzy at the edges.
She never sits in these chairs. She can't even stand looking at them really, filled as they are with memories of her brother. She drinks again, eyes closed, the wood warm and comforting against her back. She sits there in the dark, her mind blank, and drinks again.
Her eyes snap open, and she looks at the moonlight reflecting off the now half empty bottle sitting on the table next to her. She gets up out of the chair and turns around to look at it, taking in the graceful lines of the thing in the soft light from the window. She picks it up carefully, hefts it, feels the balance in the construction. It is a beautiful piece of work. They did a good job.
She lifts it higher, the light catching it and reflecting dully off of the polished wood, and slams it down into the floor. She hears the sickening crunch of cracking wood and feels the chair warp in her hands. She lifts it up again, slamming it methodically down over and over into the floor, turning it to break the arms, the legs, the curved back.
She picks up the one next to it and slams it into the pile of broken pieces of the first. She works in silence, the only noise the thump and crack of wood against wood and her own breathing getting heavier as she works.
She stops only when they are both reduced to a pile of splintered wood and a couple of screws and walks back out of the room, bottle in hand, closing the door carefully behind her.
Finnick is sitting on the couch in Annie's living room, his arm wrapped protectively around Annie. Her sister is sitting next to her.
All eyes in the room darted to her as soon as President Snow's words sunk in, but she is only looking at Finnick.
"You're going back in," they breathe simultaneously to each other.
Her father has walked across the room to clasp her mother, whose eyes are filled with tears she won't let fall, by the hand.
"Well, you don't know that," he says slowly, clearing his throat to try to clear out the emotion in his voice. "There are how many-"
"Doesn't matter," Finnick says, cutting him off, but he doesn't say more. He presses his fingers into the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. He knows, he thinks silently to himself.
Her parents don't question him.
Finnick doesn't tell them anything, but they are intelligent, and they have lived in this world for their entire lives. They don't quite understand what pulls Finnick back to the Capitol year after year, but they understand that there must be something else pulling the strings that make him move. As much as they wish that Annie could live a normal life, they know that she is tied inextricably to the man sitting next to her.
Annie's face goes dark.
"I fought you once before," she says questioningly to Finnick.
He turns to face her, taking her two hands in his and looking into her eyes.
"No," he says gently but firmly. "Never. And we never will. Mags will never let you go back into the-"
"Mags!" Annie starts, sitting up straight on the couch, her eyes clear again. "She must be alone. We have to go over there."
She stands up, still connected by one hand to Finnick, and makes to move towards the door.
He looks apologetically at her family as they head out into the cold night. They all know how Annie is. Always concerned about someone else.
It is only after that he lets himself think about it.
After they had talked to Mags, alone in her big house. After they had each passed her another small pouch of coins to distribute through their channels to the striking fishermen and dockworkers. After they had found his sister sitting on his porch and brought her in for a cup of tea. After he and Annie had gone to bed, and he had tasted her, salty and familiar, and felt her twitch and arch under his touch. After he had melted into her, lifting her up, cradling her, and letting himself go like he never did with anyone else. After he held her, the soft press of her breast against his chest and his hand tangled in her hair. After her breathing evened out and slowed and the concerned wrinkle between her eyes smoothed out.
Only then did he let himself think about going back to the Arena. Only then did he think about fighting against people he knew and people he loved. Only then, his face buried in the sweet smell of the crook of her neck, did he cry.
Beetee looks up from the circuit board he was carefully wiring together under the bottom of his glasses.
"Interesting," he says quietly to the television.
He exchanges glances with Wiress and Fil, who are both sitting on either side of his coffee table, fitting machined rings carefully into the contraption sitting between them.
They are all quiet, frozen in whatever position they were in when they heard the announcement.
"So I am going," Wiress finally says quietly, nodding her head at the machine in front of her like she has just discovered an especially complex obstacle that needs to be worked out.
The ticking of the many clocks that fill Beetee's house crowds the silence.
Wiress, still staring at her machine, gasps out a little "oh!", then reaches in to snap out one piece and exchange it with another. She picks up the soldering iron that had been quietly releasing a thin ribbon of smoke into the air and solders wires to the two pieces.
Fil turns the thing between them after she is done, following the path that electricity would take with his finger.
"Oh, that is better," he says, turning it back. "And then if I…"
His voice trails off as he readjusts the rings.
"There."
This machine, meant to measure the density of different fabrics and different threads in order to pair them optimally together, can easily be modified for much more nefarious purposes. Like almost all of their inventions, all of which are commissioned by the President.
The three of them know that while they invent their supposedly innocuous machines, their brains are being used to further the stranglehold that he has on the districts and on his people, but there is nothing they can do about it. He controls them all the same way, even if the things he wants from them are different.
She nods at the machine, satisfied.
"Are you upset?" Beetee asks after their changes are done.
"Upset..." Wiress pauses, mulling over the word.
"No use," she says quietly. "Not happy... But there is no use in being upset. Must play by the rules. We all have to die someday and nothing changes that by being upset about it."
He nods. There is no need for them to say anything else.
They all continue to work, regardless of the announcement that was just made.
Haymitch stumbles into his kitchen, leaving the television to spit its images into empty space.
He flicks on the overhead light and bangs around the place until he finds an unopened bottle of white liquor in one of the cabinets. He sits down at the dirty table in the middle of the space and gives the cap on the bottle a violent twist, comforted by the familiar cracking noise of the seal breaking. He takes his first swig straight from the bottle then puts his head down on the table, still holding the bottle with one hand. He looks thoughtfully at the knife in his other hand, twirling it around the point that he has stuck directly into the scarred wood of his kitchen table.
So they are all going to die in yet another spectacle for yet another overfed Capitol audience, and everything is going to stay the same in Panem.
He watches the kitchen light glint off the blade of his dull knife.
The door opens and his head shoots up as his hand clenches the knife a little tighter, but he relaxes when he sees the now familiar blond head of Peeta walk purposefully through the door. His face is pale and his eyes are rimmed red, but the look he gives Haymitch is determined.
Haymitch slumps down a little in his seat, his weight pressing into the bottle. It is the only thing keeping him semi-upright.
"Don't tell me," Haymitch mutters as he takes another long swig from his bottle, "You're here to save the girl."