10.

"You could stay." Effie whispered as much because the walls were thin as because she wasn't actually sure of how her offer would be received. "There's enough room."

Haymitch didn't even pause. He put his clothes on as fast as possible like he couldn't wait to leave her bedroom. It had happened so many times over the last month, she had lost count. It wasn't what she had meant when she had told him he was welcomed in her bed… He came and went as he pleased, seeking her at odd times, sneaking in her room in the middle of the night… It had been fun at first, fooling around each time the others weren't looking, hiding like teenagers… Effie had felt young again, more like her old self. Haymitch made her giggle, he made her feel pretty like she used to be, he made her feel…

Well, right now, when he did just what he was doing right then, he made her feel used. And it was slowly destroying her.

He always left her room afterwards, sometimes he stayed in her bed for an hour or so but, in the end, he always left. He never spent the night, he never tried to put into words what those moments meant, he never… He didn't want complicated, she understood that, but she wasn't sure she could handle stolen moments forever.

She had fallen.

At some point, somewhere along the line, she had fallen for him.

Perhaps as early as the time he had tried to run her over, perhaps when he came back. She wasn't able to pinpoint it but it happened.

"The couch is fine." he grumbled, tucking his shirt back into his pants. "'Night, sweetheart." He dropped a kiss on her forehead before quietly closing the door behind him. She sat naked in a bed that smelt like him, sheets pooling on her lap and she was seized with the sudden urge to cry.

She didn't.

Crying was dangerous. There were so many things to cry for she hadn't bothered to mourn that she was sure once she started she'd never stop. She didn't fall asleep either. She laid down in her bed and waited for the hours to pass until it was late enough that no one would ask questions if she started her morning routine. She often was the first person up on the farm, long before dawn. She didn't know if the others managed to rest at night, she heard Annie's screaming herself awake sometimes, Prim too. Sometimes it was Katniss or Peeta. Finnick, Gale and Johanna didn't seem to suffer from nightmares but that didn't mean anything. Haymitch didn't always scream himself hoarse when he woke up from night terrors. They were all more or less broken in some places.

It was so easy to pretend everything was alright, so easy to fall into the routine she had put in place herself… She sported a bright smile all morning, laughed at one of Finnick's jokes over breakfast, chided the teenagers when they started bickering, helped Prim braid her hair when she requested it… She felt needed and that was good. Haymitch didn't show at breakfast nor at noon, he had gone for a survey walk with Johanna from what she was told. She felt a bit hurt that he hadn't thought of informing her himself but that was his way so she busied herself with other tasks like she did every day.

Everything ran smoothly. Gale had gone hunting, Finnick was outside checking that the fence surrounding the property was still holding and Prim was in the living-room, working on an assignment Annie had left for her. Effie spent a few minutes in their makeshift garden, just to make sure everything was alright with their growing vegetables – she couldn't wait to eat healthy again, the canned vegetables just weren't as good – and went back into the house, wondering what to do with herself now that all her daily tasks were complete. If she was totally honest with herself, she could admit to being bored out of her mind.

She missed her glamorous life. She missed how easy it had all been and how stupid she had been to take all that for granted. She missed fighting with her rivals over a photoshoot or another. She missed her mother's voice delivering blunt comments on the phone every Sunday. She missed her father's kind eyes. She missed her penthouse apartment in Washington and she missed her house in L.A. She missed having people to take care of her laundry, cooking and cleaning. She missed not being afraid all the time that today would be the day she would die. She missed when men threw themselves at her feet and didn't make her chase after them. She missed the simplest times when she broke heart instead of putting hers on the line…

She heard the laughter as soon as she stepped into the house. Katniss' and Peeta's muffled voices talking in the kitchen, some clearer chuckles and outright mirth on the boy's part… Probably the reason why Gale had insisted on going in the woods: Katniss was spending more and more time with Peeta lately, obviously enjoying his company. Effie had overheard the two boys talking one night after a particularly mean fight between the two, it was sad to watch them because somewhere along the line, they had become friends in spite of everything. She hadn't meant to eavesdrop but she had heard Gale telling Peeta there was no use fighting over Katniss because the girl would choose whoever she felt she needed most. She was a survivor, Gale had said, always had been and always will be. Peeta had argued that, surely, she needed Gale most given that he could keep her and Prim safer than Peeta would ever be able to but Gale had replied, a bit dejectedly, than Katniss could protect them and that wasn't what she needed. She needed someone to keep her sane, to keep her grounded, to keep her human in short.

And didn't they all?, Effie mused.

She bypassed the kitchen entirely, leaving the teenagers to their fun and climbed up the stairs. She was feeling out of sort and was almost glad to hear the sobs echoing from the first floor bathroom. Not that she was glad that someone was crying but because it gave her something to do, a purpose. She very much needed that.

She knocked on the bathroom door quietly. "Is everything alright?" She did a mental check of who was where. The sobs perceptibly belonged to a woman. Katniss was in the kitchen, she had glimpsed Prim in the living-room on her way up so it left either Johanna or Annie. It was possible that Johanna had came back to the house without any of them being the wiser but crying in a bathroom wasn't really her style. It left Annie. "Annie? Dear? Open the door, please."

It wasn't uncommon either for Annie to break down in tears at random times. It had happened less and less since they were living at the farm but it did occasionally still happen. She had witnessed terrible things, she was haunted. Effie could rally behind that.

There was some shuffling in the bathroom and then the noise of the key being turned in the lock. By the time Effie stepped in the room, Annie had already gone back to sitting with her back to the tub, hiding her face behind her hands. Effie hesitated for a second or two. She wasn't very close to Annie – shockingly, she thought, she was closer to Johanna – Annie tended to keep to herself and never talked much about her former life. What little Effie knew was what she had witnessed : the younger woman was a gentle soul, someone who was tender and caring and maybe not totally equipped to deal with the kind of brutality this new world had to offer. She cringed each time she had to pull the trigger, she looked back wistfully at the corpses of zombies… Annie had a will to survive despite the odds or she wouldn't still be alive, Effie was sure of it, but perhaps she was too innocent.

"Do you want me to find Finnick for you?" Effie asked, uncertain. Finnick always knew what to say to calm her down or to comfort her…

"No!" Annie refused, almost yelling. "You… You can't tell him, Effie." The laughter had stopped ringing in the house and Effie waited, the length of a heartbeat, for Peeta's soft voice to echo again just to be sure they hadn't been alarmed. It was Katniss who spoke next but it was in her usual abrupt way not in the tone she used when they were under attack. Effie closed the door quietly, sensing that the matter – whatever it was – would be better kept between them.

She sat next to Annie and wrapped her arms around her, unable to see her hurting by herself and do nothing about it. Johanna often joked that she acted like an overprotective mother with everyone and maybe she did, but Annie never rejected her advices or her company. The younger woman rested her head on Effie's shoulder gratefully.

"What is troubling you?" Effie whispered, petting her beautiful hair that waved down to her shoulders. She spared a thought for her faithful hair straightener that was probably still where she had left it, next to the sink, in her house on the other side of the country. She had never liked her hair much, the curls often were untamable and the apocalypse hadn't done anything to make hairstyling easier.

Annie didn't answer at once, she went on crying brokenly, so Effie kept on stroking her hair, humming a song she couldn't place but that she had heard Katniss sing that morning when the girl was taking a shower. It took a long time before Annie managed to calm down. "I'm late."

Effie would have loved not to understand her meaning at once, to mistake it for an attempt at escaping the small bathroom and going back to her chores but she didn't. She understood, probably because she had been very careful to prevent that sort of scare herself even though it had been on her mind lately.

"How late?" she asked, willing her voice to remain calm and poised.

A baby would be a catastrophe, as sad as it was to say. None of them had medical experience, none of them had been involved in a pregnancy before, they weren't equipped to deal with this and those were only the first problems that came to mind…

"About four weeks." Annie sniffled. "I don't know exactly. It hasn't been very regular since…"

"Yes, it could be stress or maybe you need to eat more." Effie was quick to reassure her. "No need to panic just yet." Although she was starting to. A bit. "We need to know for sure. You need to take a pregnancy test."

Annie wiped the tears off her face and tried to stay focused but her lips were still wobbling. "I looked through the cupboards, I didn't find one."

Of course, she didn't. Effie had personally done the inventory of what they had in terms of medicine and relative health care. She hadn't even found condoms in the house – not that she had been looking for that, she had grabbed every box she had found during a raid before they had even found the farm, she had still two boxes left, she had thought Finnick would have done the same…

"Johanna was talking about going in town in a few days…" Effie thought aloud. "There must be a pharmacy there."

"I don't want anyone else to know." Annie objected. "Finnick should know first if I am… If I am…" She apparently couldn't bring herself to say the word.

"I will go." she offered without thinking twice about it. "I need more nail polish anyway. Don't worry."

That wasn't an advice Annie was good at following. For a whole week, she obviously worried herself to death over the matter – not that Effie could blame her – which made Finnick very uneasy because he couldn't coax the reason of her disquiet out of her. It made it easier for Effie to offer to take his place on the next raid a few days later, nobody questioned it. Well… Nobody except Haymitch.

"I just don't get why you have to come." he grumbled, as he drove away from the farm and toward the town.

"We already talked about this." Effie replied, deeply regretting her decision to team with him. She had climbed in his truck out of habit but the on-going disagreement that had started when she had stated she wanted to go into town with them should have deterred her.

"Yeah, and you're still not listening to me." he snapped. He pushed the truck faster in his irritation forcing Johanna to speed up her own car to catch up – they had found a pick-up to replace the little car she had been driving until then. Effie could perfectly imagine the young woman rolling her eyes behind the wheel and throwing a comment about Haymitch's annoying behavior to Katniss who was sitting next to her.

"Oh, I am listening to you." Effie sighed, adjusting her ponytail in the sun visor mirror. "And all I hear is inanity upon inanity. I've been on raids before, Haymitch. I can defend myself."

"With a gun." He took a turn a bit abruptly, causing her to clutch the edge of the seat in worry. "You can't fire in a town full of zombies. You're no good with a knife."

She patted the handle of the weapon Johanna had more or less willingly lent her. "It is a cutlass, not a knife."

"Semantics, sweetheart." He shot her a death glare. "If you wanted something, you could have given me a list. Gale should be here not you."

Gale had indeed volunteered too but he had relented to Effie's request quickly enough once Katniss had argued she would feel better knowing he'd look after Prim while she was out there.

"I can handle myself." She was tired by that line of conversation. She didn't understand why Haymitch was so averse to her presence. They had always worked together even when they had first joined the group. If they had to team up, they usually got together to do it. She felt safer with him and he trusted her with a gun. Granted she wouldn't be able to fire in town and she disliked close encounters with those things but she was positive she could use the cutlass to defend herself if she needed to. Plus, it wasn't like she would be alone… "We've done this countless times before, Haymitch."

"It was before." he growled, his fingers tapping an angry rhythm on the side of the wheel.

"Before you figured out you could use me for sex?" she snapped, tasting bitterness and regret on her tongue. "Is that what this is all about? Are you afraid you won't find anyone else to fuck if I get killed?" His eyes darted to her in surprise at that sort of language but she didn't even try to hid her sneer. "You shouldn't worry about that, I'm sure Johanna would be willing. Given the little time you spend with me, you won't even notice the difference." She turned her head away resolutely and studied the landscape, blinking away the tears that were threatening to fall.

"Okay." he said, more calmly. "I'm lost." He waited a few seconds for an explanation that wasn't forthcoming and then took a deep breath. "I only meant before stupid slow zombies that were easy to kill turned into vicious mutts." She remained silent and he grew frustrated. "How am I using you for sex? You make me sound like…"

"I don't want to talk about it." she interrupted him.

"Too bad, Princess, 'cause we are." he snorted. "You've always seemed willing to me. You never said no. You're the one who came to me in the first place."

"I thought you cared about me." She zipped up her red leather jacket and folded her arms. "Obviously I was mistaken."

"Sure." He rolled his eyes. "I'm worried about you getting killed today because I don't care about you at all. Make sense, Effie."

They passed the first houses of the town. Soon enough, they were in the main street and Haymitch stopped the car. Two zombies at the end of the road immediately started coming their way. Katniss and Johanna had stopped behind them. In a matter of seconds, their friends were out of the car, Katniss' arrows were flying and the zombies were falling. Effie and Haymitch stayed put in the truck.

"You care about me." she granted him because she knew it was true to a certain extent. They were friends at least…. "We shouldn't have started having sex. It was a mistake. It made everything a lot more complicated than it already was."

"What are you saying?" he frowned, twisting in his seat to study her.

She avoided his eyes, staring at her golden painted nails instead. "You want to be alone, that's what you're always telling me : only loners survive. I think you should be. I would say we are over but I'm not so sure we ever even started."

She moved to open the door but he grabbed her arm. "I don't get it. We were fine yesterday. If this is because of this bloody raid…"

"I know you don't get it." She smiled sadly. "That's the problem."

"I just want to protect you, sweetheart." He squeezed her arm softly.

"Too late." She shrugged his hand off and got out of the car. Katniss and Johanna were waiting with scowls on their faces, obviously not happy with the bad timing of their heart to heart. "Don't." Effie warned when she saw Johanna opening her mouth. The other woman must have seen something flash in her eyes because she uncharacteristically swallowed back her barb.

"How do we do this?" Katniss asked, her eyes scanning the street, ready to let an arrow fly at the smallest sign of danger.

"Johanna and I will take that side of the road." Effie suggested, gesturing in the direction of the pharmacy. They had long since emptied the grocery shop, they had to scavenge what they could in people houses now.

"You're staying with me." Haymitch immediately argued, placing a hand on her shoulder.

Once again, she shrugged it off. "No. I am sorry, I am not. I can't." She didn't know what she was talking about exactly but she was quite sure it wasn't the mission.

Katniss and Johanna exchanged a look and then Johanna stepped forward, her axe firmly in her hand. "Come on, Trinket, let's go." Effie turned around and started towards the closest house, careful of her surroundings. It would be easy for a zombie or a mutt to jump on them. "I will bring her back in one piece." Johanna told Haymitch when she passed next to him.

Effie forced herself not to look back. She heard Katniss urging Haymitch to get a grip but she forced herself to focus on the task at hands. Johanna stayed blissfully silent during the first three houses, she also took care of the four zombies they found because Haymitch was right and Effie simply wasn't just good with physical violence. Johanna, on the other hand, enjoyed it.

"I think that's everything." Johanna said, snatching the last canned greens from the pantry. Their bags were threatening to overspill. It was a good haul. "Let's head back to the cars."

Effie hesitated for a second about how to approach the subject and then decided there would be no sneaking around Johanna's back anyway. She had initially planned to simply ask for Haymitch's help but that had been before he started aggravating her. "I need to go to the pharmacy."

Johanna barely glanced at her before hauling her backpack on her shoulders. "We already took all the medicine we could. Nothing left."

"Please." Effie sighed.

"What for?" she asked suspiciously.

"Nail polish." Effie lied without batting an eyelash. She could tell Johanna didn't believe her but the younger woman only rolled her eyes before agreeing with a nod. Haymitch and Katniss were nowhere to be seen, they left their full bags in Johanna's pick-up and Effie grabbed a smaller backpack from Haymitch's truck.

The smell of rot and decay inside the pharmacy made her gag but she forced herself to breathe through her mouth. She could see two zombies with their head already crushed laying on the floor.

"Be quick about it." Johanna ordered, her eyes scanning the shelves. It was quiet. A bit too much for Effie's tastes. "I have a bad feeling."

She tried to be subtle but Johanna stayed close to her, her axe half-raised in anticipation, so Effie just grabbed whatever fell under her hands. Lotions, creams, nail polish, nail files…

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Johanna grumbled after a few minutes of her awkward fumbling. "Just get your condoms. I'm not stupid."

Effie blushed but she was actually glad for the excuse. The condoms brought her closer to what she really had her eyes on. She filled the bag with boxes upon boxes of condoms – she made an oath to herself that she would personally see that everyone had at least two boxes and that she would make sure the teenagers knew how to use them – and waited until Johanna had her back turned before she grabbed the pregnancy tests. She got five, just in case.

But not quickly enough.

"Oh, now, you're fucking kidding me!" Johanna huffed, eyeing her like she was the stupidest person on the planet. "You're knocked up?"

"I…" she started without any idea of how she could finish this sentence and not betray Annie. She didn't have to in the end. The mutt who jumped on them saved her from that fate. "Johanna!" she warned, pushing her friend out of the way in the nick of time. Of course, it only meant that the mutt fell on her instead. It had been a man, his flesh had started to rot but his eyes were still grey. Almost the same shade as Haymitch, how ironic was that? That was the last thing that crossed her mind when the thing opened his jaw for a bite.