AN: A return to split perspective! Let me know what you think. :)
Dusk falls in a deep, purplish blue that matches the frosting on the platter in the kitchen sink. Hazelle had folded in droplets of dye that Peeta pipetted onto the frosting until such a color came together. Though she hadn't said so at the time, mindful as she was not to deflate the mixture, it reminded her of the distant mountain ridges in daylight.
Hazelle admires the color again through the kitchen window, except now there's nobody around to tell. Hours earlier, her children cleared the table but she waved off any further cleanup; they had a fourteenth birthday to finish celebrating.
The surprise went as planned. Hazelle hid the cake in her workroom until dinner, then brought it out before they were too full of roasted venison over root vegetables for dessert. She'd stood back, her hands clasped under her chin, while her children took in the birthday cake, their eyes wide in awe and not hunger. Rory had flushed beet-red and hid his face in his hands, and Vick and Posy were overjoyed at the cake itself as well as the secret of it finally revealed. They'd earned their sweet reward in keeping Rory away until Peeta left.
Rory lowered his hands to ask if she'd made it, and Hazelle beamed with pride because yes, yes, she did.
As the birthday song came to a close, Hazelle found herself marveling at how much her children have grown since this day last year, when they clapped through the same song during Reflection and were issued a noise complaint. She wished Rohan could see them. And then she fanned her face, fixing her misty eyes on the ceiling, and laughed at herself when they groaned.
Gale's chuckle from the speaker sounded almost like he was right there with them. "Is Mom okay?"
"She gets like this every birthday," confirmed Rory, exasperated.
Hazelle smiled wetly, ruffled his hair, loved him. Looking at him, she could recall every one of his fourteen years before today. With the memory of him nestled in the crook of her elbow, his little fist curled over his newborn face, Hazelle reached out and hugged him close. "Happy birthday, baby."
"Thank you, Mom," he mumbled into her shoulder, "so much. Thank you."
There was some protest about eating such a treat without Gale - Vick even planning out a train route to get a big slice to him before it spoiled - but he'd chuckled, "If you knew how many luncheons I go to, you wouldn't mind me missing some dessert."
Her children, having only eaten cake twice in their life now, decided hers was the best they've ever had. As Hazelle puts the cake away and laps at a purplish blue smudge on her wrist, the buttercream melting sweetly on her tongue, she has to agree.
The sugar riled them up pretty good for a few hours but it sent them to bed earlier, too. They opted to pile into Rory's bed tonight, which made her wonder if they missed that old trundle bed after all. She can still hear some giggling - and then shushing - upstairs. She'll say something if they're still at it by the time she goes to bed herself.
Rinsing away smears of frosting, Hazelle notes to return the platter to Peeta soon. She'll bring a jar of pickled ramp with it; if he's calling the birthday cake a neighborly favor, she can call that one, too.
In under three hours, Peeta led her through the entire process of baking and frosting a cake by memory. He was in the middle of listing ingredients for her to measure when Hazelle asked whether he had a written recipe, if only so she could reference it herself rather than have him repeat himself, and he'd pointed to his temple. "All up here. That's how I'll keep business."
Fair enough, she'd thought, then prepared the buttermilk. He still taught her cake soaks and crumb coats - industry secrets, she figures - all the same.
Odd to think she's spent more time with Peeta than Katniss lately. The latter has stayed away, and perhaps understandably so; Rory has caught up in age to Prim, and a family celebration would draw someone else near. For all Katniss' grace, she has limits. Hazelle can do nothing else but abide by them.
The last fingers of dusk are losing their hold on the hills by the time Hazelle stands in a spotless kitchen. There hasn't been any noise upstairs for a while now. She's considering heading to bed herself, perhaps with the book Vick started without her, when her eyes catch the telephone, reminding her of Haymitch's call earlier. In the moment, she hadn't given it more than a passing thought.
Now that she has time, she wants to hear from him, about whatever it was that made him call her out of the blue. Figuring he's up at this hour, Hazelle reads his number off the list she's fixed beside the telephone.
The phone rings and rings and then goes to voicemail. She doesn't leave one, not wanting to play what she's heard him complain of as phone tag, but she doesn't go for the book, either.
Instead, Hazelle idles at the phone. It's probably nothing, she tells herself. Haymitch could just be asleep. It is late, after all - though still early for him. He could've missed the call, didn't get to it in time, or even ignored it.
She should've left a message, phone tag or not. The memory of all those clumsy, desperate ones she left Gale crosses her mind, and she worries her lip. She's being ridiculous. But the more she thinks about it...
Again, it's probably nothing. Haymitch sounded fine, even indifferent, on the phone. If this were Alice or Madea or anyone else, of course it would be nothing, and it would be irrational for Hazelle to fret. But this is Haymitch. He'd make himself sound like that even if there was something wrong, wrong enough to warrant calling her.
So Hazelle calls again, just to be sure, ready - and hoping - to apologize to a groggy, grousing voice on the other end of the line. If not, she'll leave the message she should've left before.
Except when there's no answer this time as well, the voicemail is three seconds of silence while she strains to listen elsewhere.
She crosses into the entry to look through the sidelights and sees the dark shapes of people moving about. This close to the door, she can hear voices shouting, doors slamming. It keeps up longer than comfortable; it's too much, too late in their small, remote district.
Something's wrong.
Her brow knit, Hazelle opens the door, leaving it ajar as she creeps onto the porch. She stops at the stairs so she can look up the road, the direction everybody seems to be heading -
Only to find smoke.
She smells it before she sees it. She tastes it in her mouth as she gasps.
Hazelle doesn't realize she's backpedaling until the doorjamb stops her. She falls against it. Her hands are clamped over her mouth and she's shivering like it's an early autumn chill that's in the air, not the heated draft that's too acrid to be woodsmoke.
Every nerve and sinew of her being is telling her to run inside and grab her children and go, now! We have to go!
But she's stock-still. She can't even find her voice to call for them, tell them to leave this forsaken tinderbox of a place.
From the darkness, a pale face presses toward her... Madea, who's holding a glass vase between her hands like a fat bouquet. She stares up at her incomprehensibly.
"Hazelle! Are you okay?"
The absurdity of this registers in her mind - the world is ending again, of course she's not - and Hazelle's face pinches in confusion. "What…" She doesn't know what to ask, least of all why she'd think to save a vase. She doesn't know how much time they have.
Madea looks her over, then up the street, then back at her. Hazelle realizes she's torn between helping her or saving herself. Madea chooses mercy; she offers a hand. "Here, let's get you inside."
No! she almost protests, as that would be a death sentence. But Madea is not acting like the district is on fire, and Hazelle's mind stumbles over this.
"Ain't it happening again?" she chokes out instead.
Madea shakes her head, placating. "No, no. Hazelle, it's a house fire, not-" She looks away again and dances in place with some other conflict than what Hazelle thought. "Look, I - I'll be back. They need help," she says, already moving away. Hazelle watches her hurry into the night.
A house fire: not a firebombing.
She listens for hoverplanes, hears nothing overhead. She nods to no one, then remembers herself with a start.
A house fire!
Hazelle scrambles to her feet and looks in the same direction Madea did, up the street.
Katniss lives that way. Haymitch lives that way.
And while Hazelle Hawthorne is not a reckless person, there's little time in an emergency. All she knows is where the smoke appears to be coming from, and that twice Haymitch didn't answer the phone.
The cobblestones scrape her feet, and her skin grows warm as if in sunlight. She can't see Madea up ahead. She almost trips over some garden hoses that are stretched across the road, snaking in a direction she follows.
It's neither Katniss nor Haymitch's house, but the one that neighbors his. This shouldn't be a relief but it is.
Hazelle stops in front of it, more out of breath than she ought to be. Through hot, stinging eyes, she tries to take in everything at once.
Smoke billows into the moonlit air from the open front door venting its wretched inside. There's another, smaller yet more turbulent trail around the corner of the house - an open window, maybe, or already a structural fracture. If there are flames, she can't see them.
And, thank goodness, there are people, moving about in their nightclothes. Of them, there's a line that fills buckets - and bowls, and pots, and ostensibly flower vases - from the garden hoses in the street and passes them along into the house and back.
Nobody beckons her, tells her what to do. Hazelle searches in vain to find somewhere to fit herself before resolving to just not get in the way.
Before her eyes, the smoke rolls slower and then diminishes in volume. A call goes up ahead, passing the other way through the line, and they still their efforts. While a few go to turn off the faucets, water puddles in the street, runs along the cobblestones in rivulets. It crosses Hazelle's feet and dribbles at her toes. She shivers but doesn't step away, welcoming how it attaches her to the faraway things of here and now.
Really, she shouldn't be here. She's of no use here. And she's sick of watching things burn in front of her. But she won't rest if she leaves now, won't be able to think of anything but ashes. She might as well see it through.
The line of people that extends into the house is pulled out like a loose thread. They carry out the various vessels for water but also things recovered from inside - the kind of things Hazelle couldn't take with her, last time.
She half-expects them to be in flames, or garishly burned, or holding a limb that may or may not be attached, or for someone to fall shortly after crossing the threshold; she has seen these things before.
But no, they hurry out in an orderly fashion, and they're coughing but whole, resolute. Many have shirts gathered up around their necks, pulled over their mouths - a makeshift protection, damp with the products of heat and fear. Their skin looks sunburned at worst.
The last figure to pass through the door carries nothing but smoke with him. Hazelle watches him stomp down the porch to join the others, a safe enough distance away. A canteen is passed to him, and he rips his shirt-mask down to tip it back like a flask.
And that's how she knows why he didn't answer.
As Hazelle makes her way toward him, driven by some numb resolve, Haymitch turns his attention away from the house to cough and spit with a grimace. With his face streaked with soot wherever his mask didn't cover, he sort of resembles a coal miner, if an underdressed one. He hasn't climbed back into his undershirt yet, as some others have.
When he straightens, he absently scans the faces around him, a fist braced on his hip. Something seems to alert him, then, and he faces the crowd with a start, his head swiveling back and forth, brow furrowed.
She's close enough to hear him ask aloud, "Where's Doc?" then, canting higher, "Antony?" and to see the blank looks cast around in response. A flutter of alarm passes through the small crowd, and she stumbles through it. She hears Haymitch swear.
"His bedroom was empty!" someone says.
"Then, he's not there," replies Haymitch hastily. He starts to tread backward, toward the house, a hand at his shirt-mask. "Keep eyes on the cellar windows. I'll be right back."
He's halfway to the house by the time Hazelle clamors forward and finds herself standing in the place he just was, mouth agape, unable to take in a full enough breath to scream.
"No!"
She startles at the outburst, at her own sole thought voiced outside herself. Someone else is tearing through people toward the house - no, toward Haymitch, who twists a shoulder back to point, as if expecting the protestor's trajectory.
"Stay put!" His tone brooks no argument.
But Katniss is not one to be deterred. In the hazy moonlight, her scars gleam waxy beneath her sparse nightclothes as she tosses a stockpot aside to charge after him.
This, Hazelle can do something about.
She pries Katniss from her warpath, swings them away. Katniss struggles in her arms and yells in outrage, in protest, "He can't!"
"Katniss," she urges, avoiding a mouthful of hair.
"Someone else go! I'll go!" she insists.
"He's already left," Hazelle tells her with a sidelong glance. Haymitch is nowhere to be seen now.
"That bastard," she curses still, but lets Hazelle lead her away, rigid-shouldered, back to the road.
There, a blonde young woman cries, "Katniss!" and hurries over to them. She's pulling a pimply boy alongside her, who Hazelle recognizes as Ennis Cartwright from Rory's class. Katniss looks them over, face awash with relief as the young woman Hazelle presumes is Ennis' sister - Telly? Delly? - speaks a mile a minute.
"Oh, it's so good to see you!" Fresh tears streak down her wet cheeks. "What rotten luck: a fire of all things - on our first night back! Thankfully there were others awake to help. And Haymitch! He really took charge when it was chaotic at first. I just know he'll find the last person. Oh, I hope they're all right." Knuckles to her chin, she looks back at the open front door Haymitch disappeared through, into that terrible fog.
Hazelle shivers against the hot wind. She thinks she remembers closing her own front door down the street. Even so, she hopes her children are fast asleep, that smoke has not somehow drifted in and disturbed their dreams.
"Oh, he's far from that," grumbles Katniss, crossing her arms. "To think he got onto me for running into fire."
"You know why that is," someone says behind them. They turn to Peeta, dressed in a wrestling team pullover with the sleeves cut off and shorts that show the division of flesh and prosthetic on his thigh.
"Peeta!" cries Ennis' sister. "I'm glad to see you, too." Her brow furrows with worry. "But shouldn't you-?"
"You were supposed to stay inside," snaps Katniss.
Peeta looks at her, indignant. "And you were supposed to stay safe, not run right into-!" He screws his eyes shut and balls his hands into fists against a tremor.
As he recovers, Katniss gestures to him like that speaks for itself. "See?"
"What difference does it make if I stand around inside or stand here?" argues Peeta. "My brain still knows it's happening. At least out here I can help."
"Well, I could've used your help just now!" Katniss throws a hand out behind her.
"What good would stopping him do when there's still someone inside?"
"You've seen him run in fresh air - he's not up for this!"
"Neither of you should be here," Hazelle cuts in. Her voice sounds tenuous even to her own ears, catching on chattering teeth. But, if nothing else, she can keep them safe. She'll have them eat cold cake at her kitchen table while she scrubs every trace of the fire from their clothes. The Cartwrights can come, too, for all she cares.
Peeta tilts his head to catch her eyes. "We can't leave now. But you don't have to stay, Hazelle."
Hazelle shakes her head, adamant. She can't leave them here. She doesn't understand why he's looking at her with gentle concern. She's the one who should be concerned for them.
She's about to suggest something practical, at least, like having Peeta recite the ingredients again or seeing about their now-homeless neighbors and getting them away from the smoke, when there's commotion from the smoking corner of the house.
"Look, there they are!" someone calls.
She couldn't make them stay put if she tried. As if of one mind, they make a beeline for the worst possible direction. So she follows after them instead, feeling an awful lot like Posy when her brothers would leave for school without her, begging, Don't go! Wait for me!
Around the house, they duck under the smoke that spills from a window, lazily now, and step over a garden hose threaded through it. And then they are pushing others away to join - Odin, it's Odin at one of the window wells to the cellar. There's a man struggling through it. Odin and Peeta grab under his shoulders and pull.
Doctor Antony Olsen is delivered through the cellar window, glasses askew, in his drawers and socks. He's lifted over the egress. As his hands and knees find purchase on the grass, he rolls over, grasping his leg. He has a dazed look on his face, as if thinking he's still in a dream. There's no time for Hazelle to empathize.
When they turn back, Haymitch has lifted himself up to the window. He passes some things to Odin, insisting he get them to Antony.
"I've got it," he says to Peeta's offered hand. It stays fixed in front of his face, and Haymitch rolls his eyes and sighs before taking it, all while Hazelle flutters her hands impatiently, her senses screaming too urgently to find words. She steps down to pull him out by his other arm - better that than his ear - and then Katniss is pulling her from behind, hands around her middle. They trip over the egress and end up in the grass, splayed like cards.
As they catch their breath, Haymitch raises his head and meets Hazelle's eyes first, over Peeta's shoulder. There's ash in his hair that falls onto her. She holds his gaze anyway.
Despite the dark, his eyes are alight. With what, Hazelle won't pinpoint until after she's vomited the frosting and checked on her children, staring up at her bedroom ceiling - but it is purpose.
Katniss wriggles her leg out from underneath her while Peeta sits up and moves aside, keeping a hand on Haymitch's back. Given they're older, Hazelle and Haymitch don't move away as quick. She props herself on an elbow and he braces himself on one arm beside her waist, knees astride her own. Their legs dangle into the window well.
This, she'll also think about later, if only to shake her head and laugh at how, the first time under a man in years, it was Haymitch Abernathy beside a house fire.
"I tried to call you back," she tells him, the words scraping her throat. Haymitch raises a brow, coughs out a laugh, and, with Peeta urging him up now, offers her a hand.
When he pulls her up, they're too close, and the smoke - all around them, between them, thick on him - forces her away.
Haymitch will give credit where it's due: the people of District Twelve remember their safety drills.
Right as he'd spotted the fire, someone else inside must have smelled it in their sleep. He forced open the front door, and then there were people pouring from it. He brushed shoulders with them as he followed the smoke to the kitchen. There, he'd wager the source of the fire was that wood-stove. Its flue looked fine from outside, so something nearby must have caught a spark from its embers. All conjecture at this point. The kitchen-shaped parts to the right of it were on fire, and that was all he needed to know, then.
Thankfully, the window near the stove was left cracked open, allowing for some ventilation. That was what he'd seen the fire through from his porch. He opened it all the way, because he liked breathing, but then the nose of a garden hose was shoved through it, with barked orders close behind.
He almost laughed, grabbing the hose. Nothing else brings this place together better than a disaster. It just hurt when he found himself as the disaster.
He got right to work, sweeping the stream of water to the fire and the ceiling and back. He had to kind of whip it to compensate for the water pressure, or lack thereof.
Others joined him, passing water along as they came. He stayed on the hose; their hands shook worse than his own just carrying the buckets, and nobody bothered to relieve him when he didn't call for it.
To say it was a makeshift response would be an understatement but it worked for what it was. The fire was out in minutes, not hours. And as far as he knows, nobody's died, and they're not out their only doctor. So, there was that.
Now, Haymitch looks like either a prisoner or the fucking president with his entourage. Hazelle is a few paces ahead, hopefully not as faint now as she leads herself - and them, he supposes - out of the smoke. Katniss and Peeta bring up the rear like bodyguards - bodyguards that hold hands, anyway. Antony limps beside him, cane in one hand and medical case in the other, his expression too dignified for someone whose ass was just hauled through a window. The boy gave him the shirt off his back, and it looks pretty ridiculous on him, so that helps.
As they head for the road, where everyone awake has gathered, Haymitch remarks, voice low and even, if a little hoarse, "Late night at the office?"
Antony shakes his head with a rueful smile. "Didn't feel up to the stairs tonight. The exam table can be quite comfortable if you're tired enough."
He nods, giving it a beat, then says, "And those pills work a little too well, huh?"
Now Antony gives him a sidelong look. He doesn't bother asking what he means. "I even halved the dose tonight," he admits.
"Good thing, or I wouldn't have been able to wake you with just this," says Haymitch, holding up the canteen. He'd taken a page from Katniss' book of rude awakenings. "Unless I smacked you with it, maybe."
He sighs. "Do I want to know how you know about that?"
"You should lock your desk." Haymitch remembers when Effie lent the girl sleeping pills on the Tour, how sickly pleased he was to learn that woman had trouble sleeping at night, too. For whatever reason, he didn't feel that way when he discovered the same pills in Doctor Antony Olsen's possession. Those, and pain pills.
Antony sighs again. If he's disappointed in the breach of trust, he should also know better. "Did you take anything?"
"Oh, no. Just perusing. I like to know who my neighbors are."
Antony slows a little until Peeta falters behind them. "And who am I?"
Haymitch shrugs. "A fairly decent doctor. I'm glad I didn't let you sleep through a house fire."
Antony considers this as he wipes an eye lens with what little shirttail he can gather. "Closed door between me and the upstairs. If anything, you brought in the smoke."
"And your little sleeping spot was right under the stove," he counters in a deadpan. "Don't detract from this. I'll get bitched out if it was all for nothing."
Bitched out and hit, if the boy wasn't here. Instead, the girl just sneered something about the ear chip he'd threatened her with once, which didn't really apply but Haymitch let her have it. It's been a long night, and it's not over yet.
They reach the road and interrupt what looks like an emergency town hall meeting. Nathan stands under a streetlight, as if in spotlight, with a very concerned audience. Someone must have fetched him right away, and with him are whichever housemates he could muster in such short notice.
By some miracle, nobody's rushed over to Antony. Though Haymitch made sure to grab the medical case on their way out, he figured they might need to crawl back in and search the dark cellar for oxygen and the like. Unless everyone's just being modest, the inhaler Antony retrieves from his case works enough for now.
Nathan continues, "We need to relocate you guys tonight and address the rest in the morning. Again, the fire is out but we don't know the extent of the damage yet, and we can't tell in the dark like this."
"We were a full house," laments Greasy Sae, bringing Annalise closer to her side. The girl ducks her head, clutches her yo-yo to her mouth. She must sleep with it. Haymitch doesn't want to think about her taking time to go back for it.
"We can make room," Madea assures her, but she sends a worried glance at Nathan that admits it'll be tight.
"I have guest rooms," Haymitch hears himself say, and he looks from Annalise to Sae, then out to the others. They don't look back at him, and his offer hangs in the air with the dissipating smoke.
Somewhere, an owl hoots. There's a dry scrape of something collapsing within the house behind them.
"So do I," Peeta adds, to break the telling silence, but it doesn't. There's news footage of him nearly braining Katniss with a rifle and inadvertently killing another in a propo gone wrong. It hasn't aired in months, and his medical clearance has since followed, but it's not hard to see why there's some hesitation among newcomers.
"And I can make room," says Hazelle, finally, "but not as much as they have open tonight." Now, people look more persuaded one way or another - as if they have a choice.
Haymitch wants to yell at them that the rooms are empty and clean enough, and they're not shrines to the dead. Between him and Peeta, they either didn't have enough time to be lived in for that or were never lived in at all. He can tell from the look Katniss is trying to hide that she can't say the same for hers.
Still, he wonders distantly if Hazelle ever shivered at the other bedrooms in his house. She'd only know which room was whose from television; he never gave his friends the grand tour as promised.
The memory comes unbidden, of Prim doing just that one afternoon with her friends from school. He was helping Verbena with paperwork in the study when they came through, and it reminded him in a new way that he had neighbors again, which felt as welcome as it did claustrophobic.
And that was with one family of three and a boy all by his lonesome.
Now, his neighbors sort out lodging. A sick, heavy dread churns in his middle as Haymitch realizes he'll have to take in people he doesn't know much at all, let alone trust. Worse, to think they're just as worried about what shelter they'll find with him.
Stupidly, he's glad he did the dishes.
He doubts he has enough pillows for the group that timidly gathers near him. Unsurprisingly, Antony remains at his side. Haymitch will give him the couch.
A few boarders opt to squeeze where they can into the workers' houses, and Sae and Annalise and that Nadine girl will stay with Hazelle. Otherwise, he and Peeta are taking in most of them.
Once everybody's accounted for, Nathan wishes them goodnight. "We'll get through this," he promises, and there's a somber, collective murmur in response.
Not one for platitudes, Haymitch just looks at his younger cousin - once an ignorant little shit, now the leader of Twelve.
Nathan lets everyone pass by him, all noble or whatnot. Haymitch uses this, waiting until he reaches him to say, "Hey, I know how you can pay back that favor: I want a big, red fire-truck."
"Save it for the morning," Nathan replies tiredly. That he didn't shut it down outright stops him short. If Haymitch wasn't leading a small exodus, he'd follow up more. As it stands, he gives an uninspired salute and moves on.
Everyone's wearier as they depart, adrenaline rush fizzling out with the fire. While they're away from the worst of the smoke, it still hangs over them like a gauzy pall. It can't be good for their heads, given what they've all been through - if not fire-bombings, then the burn of war all the same.
After navigating through the grey-out house himself, twice even, Haymitch is surprised he's as clear-headed as he is. Sure, he's alive today because he works well under the thrum of adrenaline. Usually, it's the comedown that unleashes the rather unpleasant things. But he never did experience the volcano eruption in his own arena, or the mines, or the bombings, or any firefight on the ground.
Really, for the first time in a while, he doesn't feel like he needs out of his skin. Even among the smoke and ash, he had no desire to succumb to it.
His chest does feel horrible, though, so maybe he'll succumb anyway. He's coughed up enough awful black phlegm to be thankful he was at least kind to his lungs all these years, forgoing chain-smoking for day-drinking. Why not both? Chaff would laugh, and Haymitch would reply, I'd rather not inherit black lung after all.
They reach the walkway to his house, and he nods goodnight to Peeta as the boy continues on. Katniss isn't at his side anymore. Come to think of it, Haymitch hasn't noticed her for a while now, not since... He looks to her house, the windows dark, and frowns. Nothing to be done about it now, he thinks with an inward sigh.
He ushers nine people inside, and then stops at Hazelle. "Your house didn't burn down."
"I can bring more blankets and pillows," she says, wringing her hands, knowing he doesn't have much to spare nowadays.
"Wish we'd started those down pillows and scrap quilts sooner," says Haymitch, offhand. "Anyhow, yes, that'd be appreciated. Thank you."
She's supposed to leave now. Instead, Hazelle reaches out and grips his forearm. "I can't believe you did that."
"What, say thanks? Yeah, it's this new thing I've been working on." Her eyes flare in frustration, and he concedes with a half-shrug against her vice-like hold. "Not like I wanted to. Somebody had to."
"I know, it's just-" She cuts herself off, pressing her lips. Her hand slackens. "I know."
"Then what is it?"
"It was extraordinary. That's all." She lets go and holds her elbows in each hand, looking away.
There's a barb at the ready inside him, that will tell her to back off and not fret over him at the expense of others' lives. But the blatant concern in her voice, her face, in the ache left on his arm, stirs something else inside him besides, something more confused but curious as well. If he could, he'd lock that feeing in the house next door to suffocate. As it is, he settles on ignoring it.
"Let's let Wendell worry about that," he replies. Frankly, he was more at risk of ruining his sobriety right before the fire than now. And he is actually looking forward to dropping all of this on Wendell in the morning. "Besides, I was in good company; if memory serves, you rescued someone from a building that was still venting."
Hazelle's eyes drift from his, unfocused. In a near whisper, she admits, "I thought it was happening again. Would've been useless if someone else hadn't been there. Worse, I would've terrified my kids, gave them nightmares again." She shakes her head in shame.
Now Haymitch reaches out for her, laying his hand over hers in that awkward, gentle way he's not getting any better at, because he doesn't know what to say but hates seeing her kick herself over something like this. She's no coward for it, and he's still searching for how to tell her that when she acknowledges the gesture with a small quirk of her lips, then starts to draw away.
"I'll get those things to you."
He looks over her shoulder and sees Nadine and the Crowleys haven't gone ahead without her. "Go see about your own guests."
She gives a hollow laugh. "I have cake for them."
"There you go." And he has chicken bog as a matter of fact. He doubts Wilbur will mind. "Have a fun sleepover with Greasy Sae." Hazelle's unamused look at that makes him chuckle until he coughs.
When Haymitch turns back to head inside, he startles at his neighbors - now guests - huddled in his entry, not daring to step a foot further from it. His face heats at what they might have just overheard.
Already, his house has never felt more claustrophobic. He'd honestly rather leave them here while he stays in the geese coop or somewhere. He might even prefer the house next door when it was on fire. At least then everybody knew what to do. Based on the looks they're all giving each other now, that's no longer the case.
He closes the door behind him. "Welcome. Let me give you the tour."