By late September, autumn has only just begun to ignite the hills with gold. From any window, Haymitch can see at least one tree amongst many begin to turn. Everywhere else is still lush and green as summer stretches languid over its precipice, delaying the inevitable. Haymitch isn't complaining; it's been the most temperate summer in years. What that entails for winter, though, is anybody's guess.

He shuts the last spare bedroom door behind him, having replaced the bed linens and swept.

With the boarding house patched up, he is alone in this house again. He won't have to be so mindful anymore about things like when he eats or how late he watches television or how long he's in the bathroom - all of which reminded him of what it was like to live with his family, back when that was all he ever knew.

Now that he knows how much more this house can hold, it feels wrong to have it all to himself again. None of his guests made such a protest in the time they were here - they were just grateful. They were used to less. More than that, they were probably glad to leave. A month spent under his roof, and nobody lingered when they were given the all-clear. He's tripped over garden pickings and the like left on his doorstep since, sure, but that's just how it goes around here.

Maybe that's why he's still opening his door to virtual strangers twice a week, like a lunatic. Every time, there's the same ten people - some of them were in the house fire with him that night, and all of them, like him, are learning how to do it again but better.

Haymitch has been spending an inordinate amount of time learning about fire and how to outsmart it. He's skimmed ahead in the books he ordered to see they also cover search and rescue and first aid. He shares them with the others, who will make up the emergency response team - which is part firefighting, part everything else since they're a few folk in a big valley that holds bad storms, floods, sinkholes, and landslides. They study in his living room and use the workout equipment in his cellar.

Sometimes, right after they leave, Haymitch stands in his house, the whole place feeling like it's sighed in relief yet hasn't drawn another breath, and doesn't recognize what his life has become. The start of summer feels like a year ago.

There's a knock at the door as he leaves the broom in the pantry. Maybe someone forgot something, though he didn't find anything left behind.

He answers to Marcus, who was staying in the boarding house the night of the fire despite having been here since June. Over dinner once, he implied it had something to do with a breakup. Then, he shut himself in his room and played sappy songs from his little portable radio all night. That was when Haymitch finally asked aloud, "What the hell is my life?" to Antony as they heard ballad after ballad through the ceiling.

With light brown hair and eyes, Marcus would look ordinary enough if not for the white, raised meander pattern along his arms and neck, having been scarred decoratively. To Haymitch's knowledge, he's one of the only workers Plutarch sent from the city that's still here besides Madea. All those dinners, and it's never come up why. Not like he fits in as well as her or particularly likes the climate. Even more confounding, he's volunteered for the team. Haymitch suspects it all has to do with Madea, if the lovelorn looks he's had to witness are anything to go by.

Haymitch would offer him a drink if he could.

But that is not what Marcus is here for. He tells him, "Uniforms are in."

On the way, Haymitch asks about the boarding house, and Marcus replies, "I can't complain - not out loud, anyway." Haymitch throws him a sidelong look but he doesn't catch it. "I got in trouble with Missus Crowley last night."

"What'd you do?"

"I added more spice to the stew."

Haymitch laughs once. "Oh, yeah, don't do that. What did you add?"

"Cinnamon."

"To stew?"

Marcus shrugs. "I liked it when you made chili that last night."

"You know I just threw shit into a pot and hoped nobody threw it back up, right?"

"If you ask me, that's what Missus Crowley does, too."

"I didn't," says Haymitch, "and it's Greasy Sae. She's probably fed you wild dog without you noticing." Marcus wrinkles his pert nose in distaste.

When they reach the Hawthorne household, they're let in by Rory, who asks Haymitch a dozen questions by the time they join the others waiting outside the workroom. His last one being, "How old do you have to be to join?"

"Eighteen," Haymitch makes up on the spot. That was the standard in the old volunteer fire brigade.

Ralph Terly leans out from the line. Since he was actually in the fire brigade in Seven, he's been invaluable in knowing how to train and what to teach that the books can't. Same with Odin, who's helping while he can before he leaves with the guild.

"Notice how the answer doesn't change no matter who you ask, kid. You're too young," Ralph says, and Rory frowns at him and sulks off.

"So we're all in agreement Hazelle would tear us in half?" Haymitch asks him out of the corner of his mouth.

Next to him, Madea widens her eyes. "If Rory saw how she reacted that night, he wouldn't want to put her through that. I don't think she's told him she was there."

"I mean, she wasn't exactly there." Marcus waves a hand in front of his face.

A fist forms at Haymitch's side but he has enough sense to not rear it back. "Think it goes without saying why I'm the only local." His eyes flick over Marcus. "Why are you still here again?" He asks this in a way that doesn't invite an answer except to look away.

This shuts everyone up for a while.

Only, sobriety makes guilt stick to Haymitch like flypaper. So when it's just him and Marcus left in line, he grumbles, "Family recipe."

Marcus turns to him partway, uncertain. "What?"

"Cinnamon in chili is a family recipe. But I also use hot honey I got from a friend. I can bring you some if you want. It's from Ten."

"Oh." Marcus blinks. "Well, that sounds delicious. For how much, though?"

Haymitch rolls his eyes. "I don't need money. Just don't be an insensitive jackass - and that's coming from me."

Marcus gapes at him. "Is this an apology? Like, Haymitch Abernathy, apologizing to me with food?"

He scrubs a hand across his face. "Oh, for fuck's - hot honey or not?!"

Marcus flinches too easily for someone who withstood being cut over a hundred times. "Okay! Yes. Please. Thank you."

"All right." With a small sigh, Haymitch folds his arms over his chest and leans back against the wall, his social allowance spent for the day.

He waits his turn until he's last in line for fitting. Hazelle has him stand in the middle of her workroom and sorts through boxes for approximate sized uniform pieces. Fortunately, they were able to get their hands on them. The special, synthetic material that makes it all good and fireproof can't exactly be made from scratch or from scraps, which is about all they have out here.

Hazelle straightens with a pair of pants and a jacket folded over each arm. "Let's see how these work."

"You're going to set me on fire?" he asks, taking the pants from her first. He's glad he could time it this way; he hasn't seen Hazelle in a while, and now there's no rush.

She rolls her eyes as she turns around. "Third time I've heard some form of that joke today."

"Best for last." He turns as well and shucks off his boots and his pants. As he pulls on the uniform ones, he remembers hurriedly doing this in front of his prep team, though they never gave him privacy. Up on a platform, being circled and picked at - it was worse before the arena than after; by then everyone in the room had seen his insides, let alone his privates.

He buttons the pants over his undershirt and clears his throat. "Okay."

She turns, surveys the fit. "A little loose at the top."

He shrugs. "So I'll eat bigger dinners. Not worth a whole size down."

"Unbutton it." As he does, Hazelle drops to a kneel before him, and he startles back, hands still at his fly.

"Hold still," she commands, wielding a marker. "I'll add another button further in." She pulls him toward her a little by the unbuttoned flaps, an action she apparently sees nothing wrong with. This should be reassuring but it's not. He glares over her at the closed door, willing it to not open.

"It's fine," he grouses. "Doesn't even feel loose. I'd rather that than too snug."

"You're not going into a fire with pants that don't fit," Hazelle says firmly as she marks where the flaps overlap.

"I was in pajamas last time," he points out, to no avail. He fights a downward glance. Ears burning, he tries, "Don't we also get suspenders?"

"That's next." She stands and turns away before he can look her in the face. What's gotten into her? he thinks.

While Hazelle searches for those, he searches for something to ask her. "Ever had cinnamon in stew?"

"No. I believe in salt and pepper."

He weighs this aloud, using his hands as a scale. "Economical… boring…"

"You've never fed toddlers," she counters, coming up with some heavy-duty suspenders that, at a glance, have enough straps it really ought to be called a harness.

Having no reply to that, Haymitch asks, "Any word from Gale?"

"Yes. We'll go in December, depending on when he can get leave, and stay through January. Don't want him cooped up in the cold by himself."

Through the anniversary, no less, he thinks while he says, "I'll bet. Those mountains are brutal - make ours look like molehills. It was always already so cold when we'd go through in the fall." He's hung the harness over his shoulders and now begins to clip it in place. He starts with the straps across his waist, then discovers those need to loop around his thighs. He fumbles for a minute but manages to correct it. Still, he must take too long; Hazelle steps in and clasps the final strap together across his chest.

The fit is loose and uneven, and he's feeling for the adjustment straps when she starts tightening them herself. He might as well not have a shirt on, for how much he feels the gentle pressure of her fingers. She probably helped all the others before him this way, grown tired of seeing them struggle.

"You sound so worldly," Hazelle remarks, eyes on her work - on him. "You have toured the country twice now. Must've seen a lot."

"The first time around, yeah. Spent most of it hiding from reporters and groupies so I probably ended up seeing more than I was supposed to. Second time around, I had to monitor public displays of teenage affection against different backdrops, so I wasn't paying much attention during that one." He's aware he's talking too much but doing so pushes against the tightening harness and, well, her fingers at his chest, his shoulders, his back…

It's him that something's gotten into. He's been dry long enough, he supposes, and there's no war to distract him.

Hazelle is clearly just doing her job. He can hear her breathe, calm and even. He can count on her to be all business while he's facedown in the gutter, starved for any scrap of intimacy thrown his way. It's been a while since he's felt the ache of it. He figured that part of him had long rotted away - but here it is.

Congrats to him.

When Hazelle steps away, he has to roll his shoulders. She's left him the waist and thigh straps to do himself.

"Where was your favorite?" She gives him a uniform jacket to shrug into.

"I liked the ocean." It feels odd, telling someone that. Haymitch doubts he ever told Chaff - and now he never can.

Hazelle ponders this with a hmm. "I'd like to see it someday." She looks wistful for a moment, and he can actually see her come back to her senses. "How does it feel?"

He flexes his arms, draws up his legs one at a time. "Fine, I guess. Bulky, but that's sort of the point."

She knits her brow in concern. "Not so bulky you couldn't move quickly if you needed to?"

"Nah, that's the four decades under my belt doing that." At this, she presses her lips into a frown. He gives her a flat look. "Haz, I'm joking."

"All right, then. Your uniform fits. I only need to add the button," she summates and turns away to let him start to undress, which he does in silence. He frees himself from the harness simple enough, now that he knows how it's configured. He sets the pants aside for her. "I have a few alterations to do for the others," she says over her shoulder from her worktable. "Yours won't take long if you want to wait."

"I can just do it," Haymitch offers to her back.

"No. I - I want to." She hesitates. "This job, the things it involves - it's bound to remind you of something bad."

Here we go, he thinks with an inward sigh. "I mean, it won't be pleasant work but-"

"It wore them down in the old fire brigade. The ones who didn't quit drank. One killed himself after the blast, the one that-"

"I remember." He shifts in place. Where she'd gripped his arm that night prickles. "So it's brutal work, nobody should do it. Next structure fire, we'll work with nothing and hope we get just as lucky. That's what you told all the others who were in here before me, too, right?"

He can see her stiffen and imagines her hands tightening around whatever she's working on before she flattens them on the table. "Katniss and Peeta need you."

Haymitch never took her as one for low blows. With a bitter laugh, he replies, "And they have me. So that's what this is about?"

Facing him, Hazelle lets go of what he suspects she's kept back since August. "People aren't silent when they're on fire. They scream - it's this horrible shriek, at first you can't tell if it's something else like steam from kettles left in kitchens or metal snapping." She doesn't blink, doesn't look away from him, her mouth set in a firm line. "How do you take that on when you're not even supposed to go to parties?"

"Not as dangerous as parties for me." He had a similar conversation with his therapist weeks ago. He omits the part where he said he'd rather be waist deep in some crisis search and rescue than at a potluck, stuck out like a necrotic thumb.

"Not as-" she starts to repeat, incredulous. Her hand goes to her throat and her eyes screw shut.

A second longer and he'd drop it and go to her, but Hazelle forces in a breath, forces out the words as if burning coals in her mouth, "Haymitch, I saw it all. I heard it all. I had Posy in my arms, I made her close her eyes, cover her ears - and the boys cover theirs - but I couldn't cover anything." She shakes her head at this, looking so haunted and upset that now Haymitch does what he should have done from the start. "I don't want that for anyone, especially not-"

He pulls her close, enveloping her in his arms. They're close enough for him to rest his chin on her head, his cheek in her hair. He doesn't do either. Her trembling breath bleeds through his shirt, against the keystone of his sternum. He gives her a moment.

And then he tells her the truth.

"I burned a girl alive before. We didn't know she was on the other side of the hedge. I know what you mean, about the scream."

It used to offend the victors with Career backgrounds when he didn't have their kills committed to memory like they all did. Just as well, Haymitch doesn't mind one bit that Hazelle doesn't, either.

"I killed a boy while he begged for his life, even though he was already poisoned. He was crying when I slit his throat." He shakes his head at countless memories. "I watched kids die horrific deaths from multiple camera angles year after year after year after year… and I couldn't do a damn thing about it except try to get one of them out, knowing how it'd be on the other side - what all they'd have to live with, too."

She pulls back enough to look up at him, eyes glassy. And this is the thing about Hazelle: she doesn't look horrified - she sees his point, and she's not having it.

He might as well finish it. "So, kind of a full roster on what keeps me up at night, and unlike most, I put a lot of it on there myself. At least with this I'm not hurting anyone, and I can stop at anytime without getting arrested - or killed."

"But what if it does kill you?" she implores. "What if one day you can't save a child?"

He has half a mind to tell her she guilt-trips like her mother. "It'd be a day that ends in y. This ain't a one-man show, Hazelle. Everybody's sort of decided for me that I'm not to go on certain calls. There will still be things that might rattle me, sure. But that's nothing - not if it means I can do something for folks who can't." He wants to both shake her shoulders and stroke her cheek - whichever would get it through her head.

"That's what I'm worried about," she tells him, "that you're only doing this because you think you have to, to prove yourself. You don't."

"All right, look - I've always thought fire trucks were cool, and nobody's told me no on that yet. That's what I'm after."

"I'm sure." She breaks away in frustration.

He lets her, needing both hands to confess, "Hazelle, it's the only thing that's worked! Mindless chores and hobbies, awkward fishing trips and small talk - I spend the whole time telling myself it's better than drinking, even when I'm as good at calling bullshit as I am lying. But this actually is better. I find it interesting. Already proved I can hack it. And everything you're saying, Antony and Wendell already fought about." He crosses his arms, shrugs definitively. "So here we are."

He can see her want to be prudent in reply. If she considers something stupid like be careful, she thinks the better of it. Instead, Hazelle regards the lay of his shirt now that she's rumpled it. She brushes her hand down his chest to smooth the fabric without thinking, probably out of habit, and he's pretty sure they both go red. She steps back, looking down at his boots. "I do understand. It's work we need, and if you feel up to it... I still don't like it. But that won't change your mind."

"It won't," he confirms. "Let me do the button; that way you're not complicit."

Hazelle sighs and does not surrender the uniform pants. "Guess it's a lot to wrap my head around. Never imagined you'd end up on a crew for starters."

"Oh, I have no idea how I got here," he admits frankly. "And hate to say it, but I do work best with others. I won't be alone," he reminds her, and this time it seems to reassure her some.

"I don't mean to complain when you've found something for yourself. Only it's - well, the worst thing in my mind."

Haymitch splays his hands with a smirk. "You'd think I planned it."

She shakes her head at him, arms akimbo. "Should've known you'd go and find something extraordinary that wasn't extraordinary to you. A loophole, of all things."

He smirks himself into an outright guilty grin, then, which seems to pull a reluctant smile from her as well. For how small it is, her smile changes her face from someone stern into someone warm, someone he wishes he knew all those years apart. He's certainly trying to catch up.

That evening, Haymitch watches Katniss stand in a huff and drag her chair a couple feet clockwise to the fire pit, all while keeping hold of the bowl of popcorn.

"You know what they say: smoke follows beauty," recites Peeta.

"It's a shift in the air current coming your way as you block it and create a vacuum," Haymitch explains.

"Oh, you only learned that yesterday." Katniss pulls her legs back into the chair and crosses them, resting the bowl in the center. She has to lean sideways to avoid the smoke that continues to drift into her face.

He sets an empty mug down by his ankle and reclines back, hands clasped over his stomach. "Think I also read somewhere that it won't bother you from twenty feet back."

"Go make me more popcorn."

"Used the last of it just for you. Lucky thing your house is, ah, right there." He points over her shoulder.

"Some host you are," says Katniss. "Have you made any friends with that attitude in the disaster brigade?"

Haymitch and Peeta burst out laughing - or rather, Haymitch laughs while the boy chokes on his apple cider. He beats his chest and gets out, "You mean the emergency response team."

"Whatever. That," she says, crunching into a handful of popcorn.

Now Haymitch answers, "Let's just say the house fire ingratiated me with our neighbors more than the rebellion did." And he has no idea what to do with it, besides try not to screw it up.

"Bet you started it."

"That's a big accusation," Peeta remarks as he leans over to prod at the fire with an iron poker, the shifted logs erupting with sparks and pops.

"He has a motive. You heard it." Katniss waggles her brow at the boy, who smiles in a way that's half present, half private.

"You're assuming I wanted that," says Haymitch. "Now everyone feels like they can bother me about inane shit." Not to mention they got him at a weirdly receptive time, where he can't even be snide to someone who deserves it without his conscience rearing up. "We need a new rumor that'll make me scary again."

"I'm not helping you," Peeta tells him. "You shut down my last rumor."

"Which was?" asks Katniss.

"He thinks he's funny to insinuate I'm into any woman this side of the valley," Haymitch explains casually with an edge of annoyance despite the cold finger of dread trailing down his spine.

"Not any woman," Peeta protests with a laugh. "Don't be mad, Katniss, but I teased him about Hazelle for a bit. I know they're only friends, which makes me just as happy. Not to mention Haymitch can't date yet."

Haymitch squints at him. "How do you know that?"

"Doctor Aurelius explained it once, how addictions can switch around to where even new relationships act like a drug to someone in recovery."

"Why were you talking about addiction?" he presses.

Some color falls out of the boy's face but his lighthearted look stays in place. "Oh, you didn't know? I'm a raging caffeine addict, trying to cut back on tea. Doctor Aurelius was warning me so I don't get hooked on sex instead."

Haymitch chuckles, "Yeah, you and me both," deciding to leave it be, whereas the girl looks like she'd either throw the bowl at Peeta if there wasn't still popcorn inside, or crawl inside it herself.

"You two are on one tonight," she mutters, eyes wide. She can't look at either of them directly, and he can feel the heat of her blush over the fire. He glances at Peeta; for once they seem to read each other's minds. They start to crack up. "Stop it!"

"Sweetheart," Haymitch drawls with mock patience but she covers her ears.

"Don't say another word! I don't want to know."

"All right, fine," he allays, getting her to drop her hands. "I won't tell you about all the sex I'm not having."

"Ugh! Haymitch!" She beams him in the shoulder with a half-popped kernel.

Now he and Peeta are doubled over in their chairs, wheezing into their laps. Earlier, Haymitch turned down a game night and cut a walk with Antony short to chop more firewood for this. Nothing beats laughing with his kids - at Katniss' expense no less. They recover with only one quip about him setting his kitchen timer for a year and one complaint from the drowsing gaggle nearby.

To get Katniss to stop cringing, Peeta talks about his young sourdough starter being unpredictable and somehow makes it funny. He's told Haymitch before that he was near despondent the day he realized his family's starter that's germinated for generations was gone. The one he had, he gave to the Everdeens before the Quell, and it had molded in the time they were away. Although he doesn't say so, Haymitch would bet that's on the edge of his mind now. It's probably for the best development on the bakery has paused indefinitely, even if the boy would call him a hypocrite for thinking so.

All the while, Haymitch has a separate conversation with himself. Peeta unknowingly gave him a sobering reminder about where he's at in recovery and what could happen if he pulled someone into the mess of him. It's not something he actually thought he'd have to be careful about until today. He'll ruin things with Hazelle if he doesn't. Hell, he could ruin things with himself, ruin everything.

As the stars come out above them, the smoke turns to Peeta. He coughs and swats a hand, then stands. "There's my cue." He heads for a tree that's out of the firelight.

And then the girl asks into the night, low enough for only Haymitch to hear, "Do you and Hazelle talk about a lot?"

Haymitch closes his eyes, his heart sinking. She's had a separate conversation in the back of her mind, too.

"Yeah. That's part of what being friends entails." He gets to the point she won't bring herself to. "You want to know if she's talked to me about Gale." When she's silent beside him, he answers anyway, "Sometimes. He's in over his head at work."

"Oh." Katniss ponders this, her face inscrutable. Somehow he knows exactly what she's thinking.

"What, not tortured enough for you?"

Again, she doesn't say anything in reply; again, she doesn't need to.

"Are you interested in ever sorting that out?" Haymitch asks, and maybe it's out of line but he's never claimed to act otherwise.

"No," she answers immediately, face lit with dancing flames. "Sometimes I want to be. But I'm not."

"I've been there before. You want nothing to do with them - but you want to know how they've been. You want to know if they're as hurt as you are and hate yourself for hoping they're even worse off from the guilt. But you can't go around asking that or else it might get back to them - which this won't, by the way."

A log in the fire cracks in half, spraying embers. He stacks on the last piece of split wood they carried over from the woodpile. Hearing Peeta walk back to them, he calls out for more.

Once they're alone again, Katniss says, "I don't see how it could be anywhere close to what he did."

"My friends stood by while I was crying my eyes out, held down by a squadron of Peacekeepers - the ones not in the firing squad." Haymitch heats the end of the poker until it glows orange. "It's not the same, no, but you can't tell me you don't see how I might relate."

"They didn't invent the gun," Katniss hisses back, and he notes how she just isn't the same girl who volunteered for her sister anymore because she can't say something in rightful anger without her voice catching.

"They didn't," he allows. "Would've made no real difference to me, though. If it wasn't that type of rifle, you can bet it'd have been another. Snow didn't care so long as it killed people I loved." He sets the poker aside. "It hasn't come up but I imagine he asks about you. He's not exactly hiding it, considering he put you all into an awkward position for that purpose. So we know his answer."

"And we know mine," she replies, her face like a stone. As for her heart...

"Not really - or I don't, anyway. Not when you're still close with his mom and taking his brother out to the woods. Tempted to think you're only doing that to make him sweat from over a thousand miles away."

"I'm not," she breathes, defensive, but he can tell she's as confused as he is. He wonders if instead this is the closest she can get to forgiving Gale, without forgiving him. "They're here and they understand, that's all."

"Must hurt, walking that line."

"Everything does if I think about it long enough." Katniss hugs the popcorn bowl to herself. "Did she tell you his birthday was yesterday?" He shakes his head, and she looks into the fire again. "I'm glad they'll leave for the winter." For whose sake, she doesn't say.

Haymitch nods to himself. "Thought I knew my answer once, too. It never helped me feel better, though. Not saying that's what you want right now but it's what I want for you." Her face softens a little, then, and he returns with half a smile. "Anyway, take it or leave it."

Katniss blushes when she's reminded that he's a man. She does this when she remembers he's human, considering him anew, her eyes in shadow yet limned bright with curiosity and something he won't name.

Peeta returns with more firewood. They end up not using it, staring into the banked coals as they talk halfway in their own heads until only moonlight is left.