11.

"So… Are we talking about it?" the girl asked awkwardly.

Haymitch stopped stuffing their bag with the canned goods they had found in the house they were currently raiding to look at Katniss. She was keeping her bow at the ready, studying their surroundings in case they had missed a zombie going in. It was unlikely though, it was their second house, their bags were already full and they hadn't seen many zombies on their way.

"Seriously?" he snorted. "You of all people want to talk feelings?"

The girl made a displeased face but didn't try to deny it. Haymitch had figured early enough she was a bit like him on that department: rough around the edges. It was part of the reason he liked her so much, they were a lot alike. What he knew about her life before the apocalypse, he had learned mostly from Prim's chitchat, it hadn't been a stretch to guess the rest. Their father had died when they were young and her mother had all but given up, leaving Katniss to take care of her sister at a too young age. The girl had clearly never finished grieving even years after her father's death and Haymitch could relate to that. He could also relate to the desperate will to survive when the odds weren't in your favor.

"I meant Effie but I'm glad to know that involves feelings." she barked back. "You two have been fighting non-stop for three days."

They had been fighting ever since she had announced that she wanted to come along to that raid which was a stupid, stupid idea. They weren't sneaking in and out of abandoned supermarkets on lonely roads anymore, they were past joking about clothes and nail polish… This had stopped being a joke. Things had changed. If he was honest with himself, things hadn't changed that much except in his own head. The motel had shifted the way he looked at things. He had been underestimating the threat before that : they had been cocky about the whole killing zombie business and the mutts were another problem entirely. Effie, despite the fact that she could run quickly when she had to and her ability to use a gun, wasn't equipped to deal with this. She didn't belong to this world. It was a dark, brutal world where only violence helped you survive and that unfortunately was right in Haymitch's alley. He could keep her alive but he needed her to cooperate with this goal, not to rush into danger without even pausing to think about it.

"We're always fighting." he grumbled.

"Not like that." Katniss argued. "It's disturbing the whole group."

"Oh, well, I'm so sorry that my personal life is disturbing you, sweetheart." he snapped.

"Don't chew my head off, Haymitch. I'm just saying." she sighed.

"Well, don't." he hissed, grabbing the rest of the food and thrusting it in the bags. He didn't want to talk about Effie, he didn't even want to think about Effie, just knowing she was on the other side of the street with Johanna for sole protection was making his skin crawl. Not that Johanna wasn't good… He didn't trust anyone but himself to protect Effie. If something happened to her and he wasn't there to stop it…

And what had she been going on about anyway? Her weird comments about him using her for sex… Her barbs about trading her for Johanna… The fact that she actually believed he didn't care about her when he had come back for her… The sex being a mistake when she had been the one to take that step in their relationship in the first place…

"Does she seem weird to you?" he asked in spite of his reluctance to discuss the matter.

"Yes." Katniss snickered. "But I'm pretty sure anyone still caring about nail polish during a zombie apocalypse would seem weird to me anyway."

He rolled his eyes and shouldered the bags. "I meant recently."

Katniss stopped studying their surroundings to glance at him. "She's hanging out with Annie a lot." the girl said. "And she looks sad too. You better do something about that."

"Well, it would help if you knew why she's sad, sweetheart." he mumbled, signaling she should take point.

They got back to the cars without any trouble. The women's bags were already in the pick-up but they were nowhere to be seen.

"They probably went back for more." Katniss suggested with a frown. "It wasn't the plan."

That Johanna and Effie didn't follow a plan didn't come as a surprise to Haymitch. Both of them were too stubborn for their own good. "Fuck that." he cursed, eyeing a welcomed emblem further down the street. "Come on, Katniss, we're going shopping too."

He started walking without waiting for her to catch up, barely taking the time to grab an empty bag on his way. The local bar was calling him.

"Haymitch, that's not a good idea." the girl warned him but she still followed him.

Something was wrong in the bar, Haymitch sensed it right away. He couldn't see anything however, no zombies or mutts, but the smell… The smell made his stomach churn. It wasn't enough to make him turn back though. He was low on liquor. Too low to pass on that kind of opportunity.

"I don't like this." Katniss insisted in a rushed whisper. "It's too calm."

"Keep alert." he instructed the teenager. Ignoring her guts on top of his own was probably a mistake he wouldn't usually have made but he was pissed and worried and he wanted some whiskey. Hell, he wanted enough whiskey that he wouldn't have to worry about rationing it for the next few days.

Katniss stayed by the door and he hopped – less graciously than he would have liked – behind the bar. He crouched to get a better look at the selection. He was picky about what kind of bottles he put in his bag, only the good stuff. He was busy deciding between a bottle of vodka and a bottle of gin when he heard Katniss releasing the first arrow.

"Haymitch!" the girl warned.

He stood up, took in the scene and stayed frozen for a few seconds. There were ten or so zombies between him and Katniss. How did they get there so quickly?! But he understood the answer easily enough… They weren't zombies, they were mutts. It explained how they had crept up on them so silently. He shouldered the bags and put his knife through the eye of the first mutt that came at him but a knife against so many… He took out his gun.

"No!" Katniss shouted, letting another arrow fly. "You will alert more of them!" The mutt moved out of the way, the arrow hit it in the shoulder instead of the head.

"Do you have another fucking solution, sweetheart?" he growled. Katniss had her back against the entrance and the mutts were coming at her too quickly. She had almost no range to fire. She was starting to panic, he could tell, and why wouldn't she? If he didn't start firing his gun they were screwed and if he fired his gun they were also screwed. Well… He was screwed. There was a nice convenient exit behind her. "Get out of here."

"What?" she panted, shooting another arrow. A mutt went down. Those things were clever. It didn't take long for them to figure out she was more likely to kill them than he was. They turned away from her and began to circle him. Haymitch was strongly reminded of hyenas.

"Get the bloody hell out of here." he told her again, firing his gun for the first time. He could perfectly imagine all the zombies wandering around town turning toward the sound and starting to make their way over.

"Haymitch…" Katniss hesitated. A mutt grew bolder and jumped on her. An arrow in its head took care of that but…

"Get out!" he yelled and pulled the trigger twice in a row. Another mutt down, eight to go and more on the way. Two regular zombies shuffled their feet closer to the door from the other end of the street, Katniss' face went white when she glanced outside. Not good, then. "Katniss, think about Prim. Out, now."

She looked torn but, eventually, when another mutt tried to bite her, she shot him a desperate look and then she was fleeing, leaving him alone with a bunch of undead things that refused to stay dead. Haymitch only hoped she would keep it together enough to get Effie to safety.

It was strange how it was the only thing that really seemed important at that point. He knew he was most likely going to die but he couldn't care less… The only thing he could think about was Effie. He shot down two more mutts which made the others pause to regroup, ordinary zombies were at the door already. He could hear the faint noise of an engine coming to life in the street.

He was dead.

He didn't stop fighting though.

He would never been able to stop fighting. That was his greatest flaw, he never knew when to just give up and accept the inevitable. It was weird how his mind worked sometimes. At the moment, its prime focus was to find a solution, a way to keep him alive… But at the same time… At the same time he couldn't get the image of Effie grinning at him out of his head.

There were worse things to think about when you were about to die, he figured.