The morning sunlight streaming through the open windows slants across the living room, casting Haymitch and Katniss in long shadows. She's perched on the arm of his couch, holding his old fiddle like a mandolin, while he sits toweling sweat from his neck.

"Please don't break that," he tells her, an annoyed edge in his voice, as she plucks a string. "I won't know how to fix it if you do."

"Do you even know how to play?" Katniss carefully props it against the cushions.

He shrugs. "Used to. It's on the to-do list." Relearning it has become a more active project now that he's finished sorting through his house, which he's more than a little ashamed to have waited so long in doing. While donating to someone off his approved list of kin was in violation of the Capitol's monthly stipend, Haymitch has always been fairly adept at operating under the table. He should've done that rather than surround himself with empty riches and let it all go to waste while he drank himself into oblivion. He's kept a few things to fill up his time until he dies, and rid himself of the rest - liquor included.

But he's still restless with the new hobbies. So much so that he's started restraining himself from doing chores around the house, as it would give Hazelle less to do. He's been cooking for himself even on days that she works - just because. But there's plenty more to the job than that and he's mindful not to take it from her. He's just… alert, and sober, and guiltily aware that he's more than capable of maintaining his own house - not as well as Hazelle does, mind, but still a hell of a lot more than he used to. Hazelle has said she's looking for something else, though, and she visited the site this week, so her days there are numbered. He can hold out until then.

Last time she worked, Hazelle had smiled in surprise when she found him with the fiddle tucked against his neck, bow hovering over the strings. He couldn't tell if she recognized it as his grandmother's - if she even remembered Winnie Carter, which was likely, the beloved old kook that she was among his friends - or was just surprised at the sorry sight of him with it. He'd lowered the fiddle right away, muttering he wasn't ready for an audience yet, and scrubbed at his reddened ears after Hazelle left with a lighthearted request to hear him once he was ready.

So now he practices late at night with that prospective concert in the back of his mind.

"Aren't you becoming a jack of all trades," Katniss says flatly.

Haymitch drapes the hand towel on his knee and reclines back in thought. "Let's see. Retired killer, mentor, rebel leader, district intermediary, and drunkard," he lists, inwardly musing that his mentor position actually went from seasonal to full-time with no raise. "Now a geese keeper and rusty fiddler."

"Don't forget boxer," the girl adds, her brow raised in amusement. She found him in the cellar using a punching bag like Snow's face was plastered on it. At least he finished struggling with the weights beforehand; she'd startled him on her silent feet, and he'd much rather get clocked in the jaw with the rebounding bag than crushed with the loaded barbell. Katniss gestures to the leather-bound journal on the coffee table. "Diary writer, too, apparently."

His expression darkens as he picks up the journal in question. "These are old mentoring notes I found." He fans the ink-scrawled pages for a moment, then drops it onto the table again. "Back when I believed it could actually help."

"You know what they say about common denominators," Katniss remarks without malice; that part of her distaste for him died out fairly quick after she won, having realized his initial advice to stay alive was as earnest as it was drunkenly jaded. When Haymitch only huffs dryly in reply, she says, "I bet that's something the doctor makes you talk about."

"I bet that's something that ain't your business," he retorts, eyes narrowed. While her audacity is nothing new, it's not often directed at his wellbeing, and it should stay that way. He sighs with a nod toward the journal. "I've been reading through it to jog my memory for some years - in case I missed anything for your book. But it's slow going."

"Because it makes you want to drink?"

He turns to her, his head bent sardonically. "Why are you here again?"

The girl shrugs, picking at her nails. "Peeta's busy. Thought I'd let you know dinner's at his place tonight before I head out."

"You just assume I'll go, huh." Haymitch leans back into the couch with his arms crossed, his eyes closed. They both know he will be at dinner, wherever it is.

"See you tonight," Katniss replies as she dismounts the couch. She retrieves her bow and quiver from the kitchen table.

Once she leaves, Haymitch makes himself breakfast without coffee and showers. He stumbles from the bathroom into bed, hoping he'll be tired enough to sleep for a few hours after the morning workout. He's not anticipating any interruptions to that plan, as Hazelle isn't scheduled and Doctor Olsen mentioned yesterday he'd begin spacing out his visits and of the two days a week when Wendell calls, today isn't one of them.

Since the doctors started tapering whichever medication helps Haymitch sleep, he's been having more wakeful nights. When he does manage to fall asleep, the nightmares seem to scare him right back out of it. Even so, he tries to keep his knife on the bedside table - within reach but not in his grasp - while he fights with sleep. He hasn't mentioned this to Wendell, doesn't want to describe why he'd rather be unarmed than accidentally hurt someone since it acknowledges there's people in his life to hurt. Haymitch hates thinking about that whereas Wendell is bent on reminding him of it.

To fill his extended waking hours, Haymitch has followed Johanna's advice by adding the workouts and fiddle practice. He welcomes the soreness from controlled exertion over the body aches from withdrawal or the physical misery of trying to uphold the training regimen of much younger victors while staving off said body aches from withdrawal. He hasn't quite played music on the fiddle so much as avoided breaking glass. There's less muscle memory there than in lifting and punching heavy things, and it doesn't feel half as cathartic.

Haymitch jolts awake at the knock on his front door and, after checking the time, rolls out of bed to answer it. He figures he shouldn't push his luck after getting two hours of dreamless sleep. Standing on his porch is Aiden, the middle Grant boy, who startles a bit at him.

"Hello," says Haymitch while the kid digs around in his patched messenger bag. Aiden silently hands over an envelope and a hand-sized box. "For me?" he drawls absently as he skims his name and the return addresses. They're from the same residence in District Four.

"Yes," Aiden answers anyway, and too loudly at that. He shoulders his bag, hand grasping the strap, and looks down. "Um, my dad can come and help pinion this weekend."

"All right, thanks. Tell him I'll be around." He'll need to remember to pack coffee grounds for Wilbur once they've clipped the rest of the geese to be grounded like Nisskat. Wilbur seemed to appreciate the hot cup of coffee after helping build the coop more than the money offered, and so Haymitch will abide by that.

Aiden nods back, his eyes still downward. "Okay. Bye," he says before hurrying off with his shoulders nearly scrunched to his ears.

Haymitch bets Peeta doesn't receive that behavior. But neither Peeta nor Katniss ever mentored tributes, so they don't warrant that kind of fear like he does.

Closing the door with an elbow, Haymitch rips open the envelope and fishes the letter out as he idles into the living room.

Annie's slanted, looping handwriting greets him. She answers his letter in the first paragraph after the standard pleasantries, describing Four's reconstruction process and comparing it to what he's said about Twelve's. Of their sprawling border that cups the underside of the country, the eastern half was hit the worst during the war, and so the aid efforts have been focused there. She assumes that is where the new hospital Verbena works at is located. Annie lives in the western half, where the train runs on time for the most part, she confirms, and so long as the sea doesn't dry up, that's all they need for the time being.

Annie recounts the much bigger update in her life in the second, much smaller paragraph. Haymitch can tell she's holding back. Her grief over Finnick doesn't need to be written out, and she doesn't bother to, like how Haymitch didn't bother with useless platitudes about it in his letter. She promises to send a picture of Logan once he's less wrinkled and squinted.

Before signing off, Annie writes, "Mara says that his eyes will change and settle around six months. I'm interested in what they'll be. You would think district-specific eye colors are the same but I've found that they're not if the relation is distant enough and you really look closely. Just waiting for Logan's permanent eye color gives me hope for each day, which goes to show how weird pregnancy hormones are. Johanna says I'm as moody as you are normally but I think we need to visit each other soon so we can judge that for ourselves!"

Haymitch refolds the letter into thirds, smiling to himself. He recognizes that he's only getting the good and mentionable parts, which may have been painstakingly curated or even rewritten however many times. But he's glad that Annie at least seems to be okay, and that Johanna and her other friend are still with her.

The smile is smacked off his face when he opens the box that accompanied her letter, and an indignant scowl replaces it.

In blue-inked print, a note inside reads, "For Mister Quarter Quell, just in case. -JM"

"Johanna," he curses, shaking his head and looking at the ceiling. He crumples and tosses the note into his fireplace. He distinctly wants it to burn. As for the actual package, Haymitch doesn't know what to do with that. He hasn't needed condoms in years, and now he has a twenty-pack of them, given as unsolicited as her wisecracks about him and Hazelle a week ago.

Maybe he can donate them to Doctor Olsen, let him dole them out as needed.

Or maybe he should keep them on hand in case the boy and the girl need them one day - and he shakes the thought from his mind with a vigor that isn't based in delusion so much as desperation to not be a part of that transition in their relationship.

No, he'll give them to Doctor Olsen during his next visit. They'll chuckle at Johanna Mason's silly gift, and it won't have to expire in his possession. Haymitch just hopes the doctor doesn't tattle to Wendell, as it might reopen the topic of sex and relationships amidst newfound sobriety, and he'll have a harder time insisting they don't need to cover it.

Until then, Haymitch shoves the box of condoms in a desk drawer and kicks it closed. He sits down at his desk with a huff, intent to write Annie back, but finds that he's not yet sure what to reply. He's still stewing at Johanna and her immature antics. But he doesn't plan on giving her the satisfaction by acknowledging it. While that could prove amusing to him as well - responding with something like, Thanks for the gift, Jo! I will put these to good use. Be sure to know I'll be thinking of you! - it would only invite a raunchier comeback, knowing her.

After a moment, Haymitch hangs his head and chuckles under his breath at the irony; condoms - as well as his newfound ability to afford them - were the last thing on his mind when he was sixteen and in love yet fresh from the arena, and here he is now with plenty of them in the office he last kissed his girl in, the last bit of romantic intimacy this house has seen since.

That's not the joke Johanna is trying to make. She knows all too well loved ones were forbidden in Snow's acquiescence of leverage against him, knows the example Haymitch set - or, used to set. Maybe that little update is why she was so cavalier about him and Hazelle, despite knowing next to nothing about them. She'll have to deal with being sorely disappointed; he pays the woman, and even if or when that changes, he's still him without Snow's threats - and Hazelle deserves better than that.

As he absently clicks one of his pens on the desktop, Haymitch can't help but remember treading uncertain ground those raw, early years after his Games. He was hesitant to even touch the other victors during their time in the Capitol, let alone form lasting friendships, for fear they'd turn to ash. But over time, Haymitch noticed it was okay for Seeder to instinctually hug him like any other mentor sick with dashed hopes and horror over a tribute's death. Chaff could clap him on the back and live to see him next year, and Mags could softly knuckle his chin, and Cecelia could rap on his knee when trying to get a joke in, and Zane could throw an arm around his shoulders to support himself during a drunken chorus. And Haymitch realized he could touch them back.

He briefly squeezed Marana's hand when she faltered in front of the reporters after a particularly bad night, and he fought to let it go when she pulled him from the elevator afterward. He'd wanted to follow her into her room but not if it would've been the equivalent of kissing a loaded gun to her.

"Don't you know by now we can't die?" she had said, cutting off his worried protests.

She set the precedent that even sex wasn't off limits for him, and so others followed suit. And Haymitch welcomed it, starved of intimacy as he was, despite the aching guilt he felt over Mollie. But he knew that he couldn't be in love with a dead sixteen-year-old anymore, not if he was going to live on and age from her. It was his love that had condemned her, and he'd be damned if yet another life was reduced to some pithy message about his place in Snow's world because of that.

But Marana was right; victors couldn't die. Not like that, not to send reminders from the president to each other - or else Haymitch would never have been crowned. Of course, the Third Quarter Quell changed that, but then it sort of changed everything.

So for a month out of the year, Haymitch found refuge in these loopholes. He and the other victors could cope together without becoming leverage to each other. And then Haymitch would return to his district that resented him for bringing yet another two coffins with him. Maybe they also resented him for not marrying and saving at least one woman from destitution. But they also saw Mollie Hannigan's blood coagulate on the square's cobblestones, and so the women generally stayed away.

He doesn't need what Johanna sent. Most of his friends died in the Third Quell or during the war - be it in the Capitol or on the battlefield or in the crossfires. They're all dead, and sometime in his thirties he'd lost interest in meaningless sex in favor of meaningful drinking regardless.

Though he's since grown sick of doing even that. And now he's relearning the damn fiddle.

Haymitch leaves all his thoughts behind with the box in his desk, trudging outside to the coop with a bag of feed. The geese flock to him on sight. He notices the goslings have molted most of their fuzz, and they're almost indistinguishable from their parents, albeit smaller. They're supposed to migrate by fall.

"If you keep waiting around, you'll be stuck with me and Nisskat," he warns them, scattering the feed.

As if hearing her name, she hisses in his direction, and he turns to see what he did this time but she charges past him toward the house. Hissing back, Buttercup swats at the goose, backed against the wall.

"Oh, play nice," Haymitch scolds them, hurrying over. He scoops up the old tomcat and swats Nisskat away. When he tries to smooth down the raised hackles, Buttercup twists free of his arms, scratching them in the process, and scampers off toward the girl's house. Haymitch glares after him, confident in his choice of pets.

Shortly after Buttercup jumps through Katniss' kitchen window, Peeta visits Haymitch and the gaggle, having finished his deliveries for the day, and invites him over for a chess game.

"We could also start that puzzle you gave me," Peeta says as they walk up to his house.

"Let's wait until you beat me at chess first - or until I get bored of winning," Haymitch replies, evasive. He saved a couple puzzle boxes, and the rest were given away with his other donations. He made sure Peeta received one that he'd completed and colored over and then disassembled years ago. Overall it took hours of mindless work, which was his general goal those days - not unlike now. But the cacophony of colors made the damn thing impossible to piece together again. Haymitch didn't tell the boy that when he gave it to him; he'd rather Peeta and Katniss struggle over it some rainy day and find out then.

"So you'll have any other tea besides mint," Peeta remarks aloud from the pantry, "but I know you like peppermints and my mint-chocolate crinkle cookies." He chooses a tin full of tan and peach-colored tealeaves.

Haymitch's mouth twists in distaste. "Bad history with it." He drank it too often whenever his family was in especially lean times, and it was the only thing he could stomach the morning before he was reaped for the Second Quarter Quell. The watery taste of it had lingered with the subsequent bile in his mouth until he ate that first decadent supper on the train.

Peeta nods and fills the kettle. "One time my friends dared me to eat a whole raw potato. I couldn't look at one for weeks after that without thinking of the stomachache it gave me."

Haymitch cracks up at this. "I assume the wager was worth it?"

"We were playing truth-or-dare. It was either, I eat a whole raw potato or tell them who I liked."

Haymitch throws his head back, laughing harder. "And then you decided to tell the whole country anyway."

Peeta rolls his eyes but fights a smile. "I was twelve then."

"So right around when she was skinning wild dogs bigger than you. I can see why you went for the potato." He's still chuckling to himself as he leaves the kitchen to set up the chessboard, and doesn't quite hear Peeta's comeback - something about swamp potatoes, whatever that means.

Once the tea is served and they've begun their game, Peeta says, "I think that one tree in my backyard needs to come down."

"Give me a day and I'll pencil you in," replies Haymitch as he appraises the board.

Peeta glances up to flash an amused look. "I'll hate to see it go but at least it'll yield plenty of firewood."

"You know, we haven't had a bonfire yet." Haymitch moves his rook to capture a pawn while Peeta cants his head in question. He's safe in the knowledge that neither the boy nor the girl are afraid of fire - explosives, sure, but not fire. "You said we'd tell stories around the fire together if you and Katniss got out alive that first go-around. It's been - oh, two years already?" He clicks his tongue. "Still no bonfire."

"Not like we were having them without you," Peeta reminds him, raising a brow, and the burn scar that frames his forehead doesn't wrinkle with it. "Besides, we've never trusted you around an open flame."

"Well, you've more than made up with each other since, and I'm sure I pass muster by now." Haymitch twirls his knight and ignores whatever proud look the boy is giving him. Still, it evokes that same pressure he felt when Katniss finally spoke to him a week ago, and he swears he plays sloppier after that.

"I've finished a painting by the way," Peeta tells him upon checkmate. He doesn't gloat, which only makes the defeat rankle worse. "I want you to see it."

Curious, Haymitch follows him to his studio upstairs. He's never been in the art studio before, and he looks away from the canvases lining the otherwise barren white walls, not wanting to invade or to see something that'll frankly ruin his day. Peeta gestures to the painting in question, still on its easel.

The boy's skill with translating moments from his life into paint always amazes him, even though Haymitch tries not to look. But this one is not painful to view...

They're sitting on Katniss' porch, lit by the overhead light. Katniss hugs a knee that she's pulled up on the top porch step she and Peeta share. She's looking down at Buttercup, who's stretched along her other thigh and forms a barrier between her and the boy as he naps. Peeta sits back on his hands and is smiling to himself. Haymitch doesn't look haggard for once as he sits in a rocker and looks out at the stars. He can't recall what he was thinking about, then, or when Peeta studied him enough to recreate his features and posture so deftly. But Haymitch remembers this moment, as it was officially July fifth, and the evening air wasn't too cool. They were running out of things to do or say and so they kept sitting together in silence. This was before they finally called it a night.

"I thought you only draw nightmares." He remembers the memory book. "Or dead people."

Peeta shrugs beside him, sweeping a critical gaze across his creation. "Figured I'd change up the style. For every cathartic one I do, I want to do a happier one next."

"Don't hold yourself to that if you can't." They both know lost days can pile up between decent ones. While Peeta nods wordlessly, Haymitch points to him in the painting. "You included yourself for once."

Peeta smiles guiltily. "I wanted to be in it, for it to be all of us. It took some self-inspection and a slice of humble pie."

"I can tell; you pulled no punches on your ears."

He chuckles. "Well, I like how we all look. This one was fun; I wasn't trying to get every single detail right like my usual ones."

There was no need to, Haymitch reckons, since he wasn't trying to purge himself of the memory. Even still, "You did a pretty damn good job. Looks like a photo." All this work must have taken hours upon hours. If Haymitch had an eye for art as well as active interest, he'd fill up his sleepless nights no problem. Instead, he made a shitty, borderline unsolvable puzzle over a decade ago.

Offhandedly, with his gaze on the painted Katniss, Peeta says, "She didn't have nightmares that night. She did the night before, though - bad ones. We must've done something right that day." He looks at Haymitch. "It helps when she spends time with them. Even though they're-" he falters, and Haymitch can guess what he was about to say. Peeta decides on, "They're still family to her," and leaves it at that.

Haymitch nods more in thought than agreement. What with her crying over the Hawthornes' return to Twelve and their reconciliation since, he thinks of how everybody close in Katniss' life has some hurt attached or something unresolved. At least she and Hazelle are kind to each other, and Rory's never strangled her. That's more than he and Peeta can definitively say.

Haymitch as good as betrayed Katniss in her mind, and she's still kept him around. Peeta's done the same. It probably wasn't easy to, either.

Before he damn near chokes up at that, Peeta elbows his ribs. "Which means more picnics with Hazelle."

Haymitch turns to him with a hard look. "What is it with you and that?" If he didn't know better, he'd suspect Johanna and Peeta are in cahoots.

Peeta shrugs with a growing smirk. "It's the one normal thing I can tease you about."

"Well, drop it. You'll start a rumor one of these days, given I pay her and all."

"I'm not-"

"-And then our nice friend Hazelle will be uncomfortable, and Katniss will skin me alive, and you won't have a mentor anymore," he finishes, louder. He knows better than to bring Gale into something as petty as this but it would certainly make the boy think twice.

"All right, all right," Peeta acquiesces, albeit while laughing. "I don't mean to make anyone else uncomfortable. I'll have to find something else to get a rise out of you."

"Or you can remain the favorite by not doing that."

"You know, I don't think that's gotten me better off than Katniss."

Haymitch rolls his eyes. "Never said that it would."

"Besides, Hazelle's going to be the favorite soon enough. I just mean," he quickly adds, as Haymitch wields a paintbrush, "you must appreciate having a friend your own age around."

"That's enough." Haymitch flicks the wet paintbrush at him for good measure.

But the boy is right. He hasn't had a normal friend in a while, one he can see anytime of the year, where the basis of their friendship isn't sharing traumatic experiences or maladaptive coping mechanisms, as Wendell would call it. And Hazelle makes it so easy to like her - her perplexing devotion, her lighter wit, her composed endurance despite her own hardships. It makes him want to learn every new thing about her in return, out of curiosity and respect, and give back to her in any way he can.

Haymitch thinks of this as he and Peeta return to their lukewarm tea downstairs, where they'll wait for Katniss with today's game and then have dinner, just the three of them, like almost every night this week.

All these years, only his grief has remained beside him, a companion that makes him feel hollow and cold and exhausted - and doesn't hurt anyone else if he doesn't challenge it. But Haymitch wonders at how his two victors have latched onto his scarred heart, how he let them against his better judgment. Even his friends couldn't quite do that.

Because Wendell's right; he does have loved ones now. He's had leverage ever since they held out those berries, defying the same powers that kept him at a standstill for over twenty years, and lived. It has hurt them at times, and he has almost lost them, and yet they've stayed together all the same.

Are they the exception to the rules, or have they set a precedent?

He doesn't need to look any farther than Hazelle to suspect the answer, and in reply his stomach turns with dread.