26.
Some grief is so powerful it could only be silent.
The truck was quiet but the noise in Effie's head was deafening. She kept hearing the explosion again and again, the original detonation that had left her ears ringing, the whoosh of the blast, the crackling of the flames, the whining of the burning metal… Everything in her head was sound.
What had happened after was a blur. Johanna had forced her to sit down next to the truck, she remembered Plutarch, looking sad, gently dabbing at the wound on her forehead, the commotion a few feet away where everyone was circling Katniss and Haymitch as if they were wild animals that needed to be approached with caution… And then Katniss' howling, the howling of someone who had lost everything she had left.
They had to give her sleeping pills to calm her down. She had been sleeping in the back of Haymitch's truck ever since, with Peeta watching over her.
Effie also remembered the tears on Annie's face, the ones Johanna couldn't quite hide in her own eyes and Gale's silent but defeated raging. She didn't know who said there was no body to recover. She didn't know who gave the order to move on. Haymitch had hauled her in the car without a second glance and they had started to drive again.
Then there had been silence in the truck and the sounds in her head.
She was seeing everything on a loop.
Again and again and again.
"Don't fall asleep." Haymitch barked at her suddenly.
She sat up straighter, realizing that she had indeed been nodding off. Concussion, a voice in mind whispered. She was supposed to stay awake for a few more hours.
She stared at Haymitch but he wasn't looking at her. He was looking straight ahead, at the back of the rebels SUV, with a hard look on his face. He had closed up. His hand were shaking so much it was a wonder he could hold the wheel at all but Effie wasn't in any state to drive and Peeta was asleep on the back seat with Katniss. Gale, Annie and Johanna were all in the rebels' SUV.
Where is Prim?, the absurd thought popped into her mind. Prim should have been with them, nagging Effie with questions about this or that. Prim should have been singing joyfully out loud with Katniss. Prim should have been…
"Stop the car." she whispered.
Haymitch didn't answer or show any sign of slowing down. He was so lost in his own thoughts she wasn't sure he even heard.
"Stop the car, Haymitch, please." she repeated louder – louder than the deafening noise of the explosion in her head.
He glanced at her in annoyance that soon turned into worry. "You're okay?"
"I feel sick." she replied, forgetting to feel embarrassed.
The truck slowed to a stop and she fumbled with the door so much he had to lean across and open it for her. She stumbled out, the cold air slammed into her but she welcomed the chill. It helped clear her head of the sound. She bent in two, feeling the urge to be sick, to be something else than silent with grief but her stomach was empty and the only thing that came out was a wretched sob.
Haymitch's arms wrapped around her from behind. She turned and clung to him, burying her face in the grey wool of his coat, not even trying to hold back her tears. She managed to collect herself for Seneca's death but Prim… Haymitch didn't even try to ask that of her. He pressed his cheek against the side of her head and held her so tight she suspected he needed the comfort just as much as she did.
"What's wrong?" Johanna asked, from where the SUV had stopped.
He sighed, pressed a kiss on her hair and shouted back to the younger woman. "Can you drive?"
Johanna clearly hesitated, glancing back inside the truck, reluctant to leave Annie. But in the end, she came to the truck and sat behind the wheel, telling them to get a move on before Coin took off without them.
The loss of the pick-up meant a loss of space that would require Effie's skills at organizing but she was sobbing so much, she could barely see the seat as it was so she let Haymitch pull her back inside, slightly surprised when she found herself almost on his lap despite the small space left where she could have sat. She wrapped her arms around his neck while he cradled the back of her head in his hand to keep it from bumping against the roof.
The sobs wretched her body. She couldn't remember ever having cried like that. It was physically painful. When the sobbing finally died down into a pitiful whining, it was from body exhaustion rather than because she had exhausted her grief.
"Are you done wailing?" Johanna snapped, her own voice suspiciously hoarse.
Effie was surprised it had taken her that long to tell her to knock it down, she wasn't surprised by the way the younger woman was biting her bottom lip to the point of bleeding or the wet traces on her cheeks.
"It's all my fault." Effie whispered. "If I hadn't wanted to help Seneca…"
"No, it's not." Haymitch's voice was harsh and his arms tightened around her. "Don't start thinking like that."
"You're so self-absorbed…" Johanna sneered. "This isn't about you. Don't even think of making this about you. You had your cry now you move on."
"This isn't the kind of thing you simply cry over once and then move on!" Effie protested, horrified at the mere thought. Haymitch and Johanna exchanged a glance and she knew, in that second, that they understood each other a lot more than Effie could ever hope to understand Haymitch. They would bury Prim's death as deep as they could and pretend it never happened or, at least, that it didn't hurt them as much as it truly did. "We lost Prim!"
Peeta steered on the back seat but didn't wake up. Katniss was still out to the world.
"We lost Prim and we lost Finnick." Johanna hissed. "That's how this world works. Get over it."
"You can't let it break you, sweetheart." Haymitch added. "You will be of no use to anybody if you let it break you. We carry on, that's what you told me."
"It was different!" she argued. "Finnick was… Prim…" There was no comparing the two.
"It's not." Haymitch shrugged but it was a bit too detached. He was faking it, she was certain. "Look, Effie, we need to stay on top of things here. We can't let our guard down."
"You saw who took the shot." Johanna stated, her hands gripping the wheel so tightly her knuckles turned white. "Because, I'm pretty sure the others weren't shooting when it happened. There were only the weird teeth bitch and a blond guy left. They were running."
It took a few seconds for Effie to catch up and when she did, her eyes widened in shock. "Are you saying one of us hit the pick-up?"
"I'm saying there were only two people shooting when it exploded." the woman replied, gritting her teeth.
"We can't know that." Haymitch countered but the hand that was resting on Effie's thigh clenched reflexively.
"Please!" Johanna scoffed. "Gale and Coin. They were the only ones using guns by that point."
"You can tell Katniss that." Effie objected at once. "If she thinks Gale… It would destroy her."
"Agreed." Haymitch nodded. "Keep your mouth shut, Jo."
"So we're really kidding ourselves into thinking it's an accident?" Johanna insisted. "Because I don't think it was. I think it's fucking convenient. One less… What did she call them, again, Trinket? Liabilities? Or did we imagine that as well, Haymitch?"
The younger woman's speech left an uneasy feeling in the pit of Effie's stomach.
"I thought it was rude to spy, Princess?" he nudged her, obviously not happy. Effie didn't dignify that with an answer. It had been Johanna's idea and he shouldn't have kept that kind of information from them. "The way I see it, we have three options: first one, we choose to think a stranger killed Prim; second one, it was Gale and it must have been an accident, so we don't talk about it because Katniss is already going to be damaged enough, we don't need to add Gale to that; third one, it was Coin and it was murder."
"I'm leaning toward option three." Johanna spat. "Trinket?"
Effie took her time. It was difficult to think. There was still the noise in her head, no matter how hard she tried to will it away. The sound of the blast kept echoing and the image with it… As much as some of the memory was clear some of it was blurry and she hadn't been paying attention to President Coin in the first place. She had been focused on Haymitch and Katniss.
"I… I don't know." she stammered, remembering a lot of odd instances, odd thrown-off comments. "I think it's possible."
"It's not possible, it's likely." Haymitch sighed, rubbing his face. "Except we don't have proof."
"Do we need one?" Johanna retorted. "She hinted a million times that she would have left the weakest one behind."
"Are we really thinking Coin murdered Prim?" Effie whimpered. Sweet, sweet Prim who never had a mean bone in her body… Sweet Prim who was always so eager to braid Effie's hair or to chat about mindless things… Sweet Prim who was always so cheerful even when Effie was faking her own smiles…
"Question is : what do we do?" Johanna growled. There was a murderous glint in her eyes.
"Again, three options." Haymitch replied. "One, we cram everyone in the truck and we take off. Two, we pretend everything is alright."
"What is three?" Effie asked innocently. Haymitch and Johanna didn't glance at each other but they didn't need too. They both tensed. Effie almost fell off the seat in her hurry to get off Haymitch's lap. Three people on the front seat was a tight fit and she found herself stuck between Johanna and Haymitch. "You can't be serious!" She stared at one and then at the other but they were both sporting grim faces. "No one is killing anyone." she hissed before they could say anything else.
Even through the grief, even through the rage she felt at the idea that Prim might have been sacrificed on purpose, she couldn't resolve herself to that.
"Then we take off." Johanna rolled her eyes.
"We can't. We need the bunker." Haymitch said. "We could kill them and pretend to find Thirteen by pure luck but we can't take off and then show up at Thirteen."
"You were the one saying we don't need any bunker." Johanna reminded him.
"Yeah, when I could still shoot straight and Finnick was still alive." He shrugged it off but Effie saw how much it pained him to feel diminished. "Peeta limps, I bet you Katniss will be in a right state for a while, Annie is pregnant, I'm not sure how right in the head Gale is anymore and my aim is off. Effie is good with a gun but ammos won't be eternal. That leaves you, Johanna. Can you protect the whole group by yourself?" He made a face. "Taking into account that we will have a screaming thing on our hands in a few month."
"It's a baby, really, Haymitch." Effie clucked her tongue.
"Doesn't change the fact that we need the bunker." he snorted without amusement.
"So we stay put. That's your solution?" Johanna growled.
"It's the only one we have." Haymitch said, his hand falling on Effie's thigh. "You keep Annie close, Effie and I will keep an eye on the kids. I don't think Gale is in any danger, he's too taken with their rebels ideology."
He didn't say he would watch out for Effie too but it was heavily implied. She felt tired. Wasn't it enough to run from zombies? Did they really have to be wary of each other too?
Her head was throbbing.
"Do you think it has been long enough that I can sleep now?" she asked, burrowing against Haymitch's side.
"Yeah." He twisted so his back would be to the door and she could use him as a proper pillow. Johanna rolled her eyes but didn't comment. There wasn't enough room for any of them to be comfortable anyway. Effie felt better when his arms were once again around her but it didn't make the exhaustion or the images in her head go away.
She drifted off, lulled to sleep by the hushed conversation between Haymitch and Johanna. She didn't know what they were talking about and she wasn't sure she wanted to.
None of them noticed that the sleeping pills had stopped working.