A/N sorry I haven't updated in a while! An anon on tumblr reminded me of this account haha:) anyway, this wasn't a prompt but I was in an angsty mood so I wrote this: hope you enjoy!:)

The Shock of the Living

Effie knew where she was. Although she wasn't sure why she was there. The white lights and the marble floor were unfitting to her preferred afterlife. The white room was okay, she supposed. Disappointedly though, absent were the traditional herald angels with innocent eyes helping her upwards. As Effie's eyes adjusted a bit more, the brightness seemed to fade and her ears pricked up to hear the loud, beeping next to her and the mumble of beings as background noise. Unfortunately, they were in grey and lacking the feathery wings and golden halos Effie had longed for.

She tried to move, she really did. Her body however, had other plans. Effie grew stiff and rigid. Her body hurt so, so much. Perhaps she was mistaken originally, to her dismay, she must still be alive. Effie wanted to cry then, but then she remembered crying would not help the matter. It would not help her die. She had discovered that a long time ago.

As her senses slowly started to recover, she heard a woman's voice and a man's voice from across her bed. They seemed to be discussing her.

"He'll never forgive you,"

"He doesn't like me, he wouldn't forgive me whatever I do,"

"He won't listen to you," the man said. She recognised that voice from somewhere, however Effie had yet to place it to a face. The woman seemed to pause. "Trust me, he will not do anything you want him to,"

"Then what do you suggest we do? He can't know she's here!" The woman insisted. Who? Who can't know of her whereabouts? Where was she? She felt panic rise in her body like the tide crashing against the rocks. And what she realised was her heart monitor quickly sped up.

"Get the nurse!" The man shouted.

She knew she was alive now. Although 'alive' was not really an adjective she would describe herself with. There was nothing lively about how she whimpered protests, with her words caught in her dry throat. But she was breathing actual air as the medicine slowly put her in a deep sleep.

/

He was merely inspecting the casualties from the last rescue mission why he spied her from the corner of his eye. Haymitch simply stared at her with a feeling so awful it could be nothing else but dread. She look dead. But she couldn't be, her heart monitor was beeping. Although evidence of her torture and pain laid on her like an untimely frost. Cold, and unwelcoming, yet fitting to her current guise.

He had the decency to drop his head in a state like mourning as he approached her in the hospital bed. She was different to what he imagined her to be like the next time he saw her. No bright light, no wings, no halo. Maybe his perception of her had changed once he thought she'd died, from the Effie he knew to some kind of false angel. He made a mental note to never do that ever again.

He sat solemnly next to her bed. "Effie...?"

She stirred, "Haymitch," she mumbled. Although not in a peaceful way, more panic stricken. Haymitch frowned.

"Effie wake up!" He shook her gently.

"NO!" She scratched and kicked and thrashed wildly in her bed as soon as he touched her. Her eyes were wide and she was shaking now. Effie was looking at him, and she looked right through him. And it shouldn't have killed him, but it did.

"Hey princess," he smiled sadly. Fortunately she seemed to relax slightly.

"Haymitch?" She whispered. He simply nodded in reply, too stunned to see her again to speak.

"You're not real,"

"Yes I am,"

"You're dead,"

He furrowed his eyebrows. What?

"What are you talking about princess?"

"They... They told me. Am I in heaven?" She asked, dazed, unsure.

He chuckled despite the circumstances. "There's nothing angelic about me, sweetheart,"

She didn't smile, but her eyes regained some emotion.

"Where am I, Haymitch?"

"District 13"

"That's not real,"

"Yes it is, we're in it,"

/

She broke. She had lost all sense of stability. Her home, her family, everything. And although Effie knew she shouldn't have let the Capitol break her, it already had. In the same way she had learnt that the dead had often died long before they'd reached their casket.

Haymitch seemed to sense her realisation.

"I'm sorry,"

"What's going to happen to me?"

"I don't know,"

"Will they kill me?"

"No. I won't allow that. You've been through enough."

"If you knew anything about what I've been through, you'd let me die," What most concerned Effie was how she could say that sentence without a hint of sadness or remorse. She was emotionless. Haymitch looked at her, evidently shocked. He simply sighed, after all, what can you say to something she had just uttered?

"Get some sleep Effie, I'll be back in a few hours," Haymitch said, then he left. Leaving behind only the grey chair he had been sat on. Nothing else.

"I hate you," she muttered. Of course she did, he had left her. He had left her, her. Behind. To endure all of that she had endured. Effie stared at the itchy bed sheets as anger filled her, accompanied by hot tears in her eyes. She knew he had heard her though, as his heavy footsteps stopped for a brief moment. Effie thought he would say something, yet she was wrong again, as he simply sighed a deeper sigh than before and walked away. She balled up her fists in anger as she finally let the only warmth she had felt in months fall from her eyes. Effie stopped herself from making any noise though, that would make people aware of her and recently he had come to hate that. Pity was for the sick or the dead, and she was neither of those- merely misfortunate.

In the back of her destroyed thoughts she rediscovered a poem she had once read as a child. She merely replaced the poem's character with herself.

Effie are you grieving

Over goldengrove unleaving?

She gasped as more years fell. She felt nothing, yet she was crying. Slowly, she lay on her bed and cried herself to sleep. Something she hadn't done since her last, dead tributes had died. But now what of the ones who were still here? So many questions flooded her brain it tired her. She fell into a thankfully dreamless sleep as she reminisced the last two lines of the poem.

It is what the blight man was born for

It is Effie that you mourn for.