The ghost of a gunshot still rings in his ears when Haymitch startles awake. He throws off his blankets and jumps out of bed, looking around wildly until his bedroom proves unthreatening.
Just a dream.
That's barely a comfort though. The actual gunshot had ended his mother's life, meters in front of him.
He drops onto the side of the bed, holds his head, catches his breath. Something wet drips off his nose. He rubs his palms in his eyes.
It's been a while since Haymitch dreamed of the executions, those three staccato gunshots from the crowded town square... the rivulets of blood between the cobblestones.
He'd been subdued by the Peacekeepers. He kept waiting for them to shoot him and they never did.
The old family bottle of sleep syrup ensured he made it to the morning his uncle Sear woke him up to attend the funerals. Only some family came, and when they left, they left for good.
And then life went on unwavering.
And it's all Haymitch can do to make toast and watch shitty television instead of who knows whatever else.
When Wendell calls an hour later and observes aloud that he sounds shaken, Haymitch finds himself answering why.
"I had closed my eyes. I knew I couldn't stop them in time. And I knew I'd be useless if I saw it happen. But I heard it, and I woke up to it today," says Haymitch, numb, slouched at his desk with a fist braced against his temple. He's glad he can't see the psychiatrist's face, whether it's carefully composed or drawn with pity. This way, it seems like confessing to the geese or the wind or something.
But neither the geese nor the wind talk back to him.
"That sounds very frightening," a soft-spoken voice affirms after a moment - probably jotting something down. Haymitch wonders what's the worst thing Doctor Wendell Templesmith has ever heard in a country like this. "I'm sorry you went through that, Haymitch."
With a wry cough, Haymitch replies, "I'm sorry my mother did. She doesn't get to have bad dreams about it."
"Unfortunately so. But you do, and so we should focus on you right now."
"Sure," he allows. As if they don't do that enough, he wants to say but doesn't. It would start a whole back-and-forth about self worth or something. Haymitch gets the feeling they don't share the same sense of humor - if the man owns one at all. But he prefers this to being chummy with each other.
To his credit, Wendell doesn't prod at the executions anymore than Haymitch has allowed. To do otherwise would surely land the phone onto the receiver. He must know there's nothing there to reconcile.
They revisit the topic of nightmares, which was something Haymitch admitted to but refused to divulge further in their previous sessions. Now they have a conversation that's probably structured around some algorithm Wendell has in front of him. Haymitch is relieved once they get to solutions. They discuss rewriting his nightmares with better endings, which sounds like rewriting history to Haymitch. But he figures if wishful thinking about saving his family allows him to potentially sleep longer and more often, he can at least be better rested when he wakes up to reality.
At the suggestion of rehearsing his dreams in advance, Haymitch looks sidelong at the phone. "About what?"
"What's good dream material to you?" Wendell asks back.
"Uh, I guess good memories." He won't elaborate there; he doesn't want any examples shot down when precious few come to mind: apple picking, chess games, stories told by fiddle and candlelight, ballgames in damp grass at dusk, street food and jokes in the Training Center elevator at three in the morning.
Wendell accepts this much, though, and instructs him on how to go about it. "What do you think?" he says at the end.
"I think it's long overdue." Haymitch wasn't deemed mentally disoriented enough in Thirteen to warrant such efforts as these. And of course the Capitol never offered anything to victors that would admit to putting them all through hell. Left to his own devices, he's fought a losing battle with sleep for years.
After they make a bedtime plan, Haymitch can no longer ignore the memories evoked from his latest nightmare that bleed like a reopened wound. He imagines blood pooling under his desk chair while he snarks at the word sleep hygiene. He wants to set the memories down in some far corner of his mind and flee. But that's what he always does. And all these years later, they haven't gone anywhere - and neither has he.
So when Wendell asks whether he has anything more to share, Haymitch hears himself declare in a low voice, "They deserved so much more than that." He shakes his head, his face tight with sorrow. "I know things ain't fair in life. But it hurts, how unfair it was."
It felt so disproportionate. When he wasn't beside himself with grief, Haymitch was enraged, bewildered, thinking, For that axe rebound? For a fucking hat trick?
He reckoned Snow must have been counting on Ruby Holbrook to win before Haymitch bested her with the force field stunt. She was a legacy tribute - some victor's daughter - and a Career win for the Quarter Quell was safe whereas some wily hayseed from Twelve winning for the first time in four decades was deemed seditious enough to subdue his home district ahead of any incitement. Apparently, Haymitch riled them up quite a bit while he was gone. He didn't know at the time; he couldn't ask anyone about it between a busy homecoming and his world ending as soon as the cameras left. There was no one around to answer until he sought out Lorna Donner.
But he was confounded again when he learned of the prostitution ring. Snow could have made money off him for all his troubles, and he didn't. He ensured Haymitch had nobody to love but that gave him nobody left to lose, either. And it turns out that was enough to weaken him. Haymitch fostered resentment for years but he found no hope in the children he couldn't bring home, or the miners' strike that further branded him as a pariah, or the covert group that simmered and waited as he waded through blood year after miserable year. It was pathetic, really, that Haymitch couldn't rise to the occasion until two kids showed more courage and love and defiance in one action than he had in the last twenty years combined.
"You're in pain," says Wendell.
With a hard, startled blink, Haymitch tries to walk back his thoughts to the present conversation. He feels ten steps ahead of Wendell. Though he's probably in the wrong direction, down an old path that goes nowhere new, just circles back over and over.
"Well, yeah," he says as if it's obvious. He wouldn't have turned out how he did if he wasn't. He has plenty of pain unrelated to the executions, too, but he keeps his answer constrained to there. "I've had to keep it with me ever since that night."
"What I hear is that you believe you have a responsibility to carry this pain?"
"That's right. And before you say that's a bad thing, keep in mind it's been the only thing that's kept me alive some days."
"I wasn't going to say that, Haymitch. But I'm wondering whether you can carry their memory in a way that doesn't hurt you as much."
"I mean, I've tried other ways." He glances at a picture nearby but can't bring himself to look at it directly. "But that doesn't change anything. And you shouldn't feel sorry for me when I caused it," he says, vehement.
That sets off a back-and-forth. It's odd how Wendell can challenge the way Haymitch reflexively blames himself without outright pulling his ear over the phone for it. With more questions than not, he shifts Haymitch's perspective of the matter from who, why, woe to that happened so how will he go on from here, with the underlying assumption - based in clinical hope - that he will indeed go on.
As his answers begin to dwindle, Wendell finally suggests, "What if you lived your life well in honor of them, rather than punish yourself in uncertain atonement?"
Haymitch doesn't know what that looks like. When he tries to consider it at Wendell's request, it's overwhelming: healing, peace, a worthwhile legacy.
He clears his throat. "I'll mull it over. That's all I want to say." He's well aware their little contract is open, not full, disclosure.
"Thank you for sharing. Remember, we can always discuss ways to manage any intense feelings, even when you keep the details about them private."
Until now, Haymitch has solely opted for the private option. He reads his clock and says, "Hint taken. I won't deviate from the treatment plan next time. My bad, Wendell."
"That's not what I meant," his therapist says with some exasperation, and Haymitch takes petty delight in ending on that note, their fifty minutes spent. He probably just gave him more paperwork.
But as Haymitch hangs up the phone, he's surprised that he doesn't feel worse than all those other times when he didn't admit to anything he deemed emotionally incriminating. Now, he doesn't feel better - more like he's facing a new direction, having been wrenched around.
It should be worrying or embarrassing, how much he divulged. But he just feels one month voluntarily sober.
Wendell has kept up so far, and he hasn't led him to stupid conclusions, just gratingly tedious ones. Though Haymitch hasn't given him much to work with - until today. He'll have to wait and see if doing that is going to steer him toward a breakthrough or a bottle.
In the meantime, Haymitch folds laundry. It's almost laughable how sparse his wardrobe is now. His closet looks two-thirds empty even after he's restored what's been washed.
He has one suit to his name now. Nathan promptly returned it, dry-cleaned and pressed, from the Capitol. He insisted that he owes Haymitch for the favor. Worse than that, he didn't leave right away, staring down at his dirt-caked boots on the porch while Haymitch held the suit tucked behind his shoulder and stared down at the space between them. He'd asked his cousin what he thought of the city, and Nathan said it was too big. He mentioned that the Secretary of Communications commented on Haymitch's absence from the conference. Haymitch told him that he must've done a decent job for a Gamemaker to want him replaced with his sorry ass, and they left it at that.
However, the day before, Haymitch had shook his head through a phone call with said Secretary, who sounded more resigned than disappointed. "I suppose I got roughly what I asked for in the end; your representative was scrappy and vocal - though not as shrewd. Maybe for the next representative meeting-"
"No, Plutarch." Haymitch argued they needed new blood like Nathan - someone who was willing and didn't have a couple atrocities under his belt. He didn't care if Plutarch flinched at that. As for himself, he left with the Mockingjay.
Before Haymitch could accuse him of some ulterior motive, considering the constitutional conference had just adjourned, Plutarch said, "You better have found something to do out there, Haymitch. I understand wanting to settle down. But you're like me - you can't stand being idle for too long."
When you're sober went unspoken but Haymitch heard it just the same.
He didn't end the conversation gracefully.
Now there's a new offer stuck in his head, about living for his lost loved ones rather than against himself for what he did to them. Whatever the hell he's been doing lately, it's not honoring either commitment. And he doubts taking another offer from Plutarch will help. It didn't help the last time - neither did winning the war. Haymitch reckons nothing could be enough to atone for himself.
So, Wendell's suggesting, don't approach it from that angle anymore. Live for them - and others, Haymitch adds with some already in mind - instead of against himself. But now, without Wendell, those keep muddling into the same thing. Haymitch doesn't know how else to live for them.
There's a dry gnawing within him that Haymitch recognizes immediately, intimately - and a little ironically. He wants a drink now. But he has nothing, and he's trying to keep it that way. He fell forward; he'll be damned if he crawls backward.
He feeds the geese, then ends up pacing around the house, biting his inner cheek all the while. He's too impatient for the fiddle; it whines on contact with the bow and he sets it aside before he swings it into a wall. But he's not motivated to do much else. And he's not hungry.
He splashes cold water on his face, groaning into the towel as he accepts that he really just shouldn't be by himself right now.
Underneath the cooled loaf of bread on his kitchen counter this morning was a note from Peeta saying that he and the girl were going to the lake today. So Haymitch can't bother them - which is probably for the best. Not to mention he's very grateful he wasn't invited along for that, spared of the secondhand embarrassment as they clumsily navigate swimming together or whatever else.
Haymitch leaves with the small pile of clothes that he left on the coffee table the night before. It's a gamble, and his pulse is in his ears when Vick answers the door and takes the clothes from him. But then Hazelle appears beside her son and invites Haymitch inside.
"I'm due for a break," she tells him, pouring herself a glass of water. He declines her offer of one for himself. She catches Vick before he sets the small pile of clothes onto a chair. "Can you drop those off at the Crowley's and send them over if they have time? I still need their measurements."
"I'm not done with one of them," Haymitch mutters to her. Some degree of understanding flickers across Hazelle's face, and Vick still leaves with the fully mended clothes at her request.
As the front door closes, she turns to him. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I - Can I finish the shirt here? I can sit in the corner, we don't have to talk-"
Her hand is light on his forearm. "Of course, Haymitch. You can sit with me. I'm able to talk while I work." The corners of her eyes crinkle with her small, reassuring smile, and he could hug her but refrains, already feeling like a leech.
"Momma," Posy calls from the other room, "can I use this?"
"What is it?" Hazelle calls back.
He hears little feet scampering toward them and then there's Posy holding sticks of chalk, begging, "I want to draw on the path outside. Please, Momma?"
"Just one stick. I need the rest to outline clothes."
"Okay! Thank you very much!" Posy tries to hand her the rest of the chalk.
"No, go put the rest back. One stick," Hazelle reminds her, holding up a finger.
The little girl looks up at him. "I'll try to draw one of your gooses," she says, "but I still haven't seen one up close."
"They're meaner to folks who are only slightly taller than them," he tells her, only slightly sarcastic. "And if they charge at you, your mom will get mad and then we'll both be crying."
Posy insists, "I won't cry!"
"Posy," Hazelle cuts in with the grace of much experience and that angled look all parents seem to have, "how about you ask Haymitch nicely if we can join him to feed the geese like you wanted?"
Her advice is taken, and Haymitch tells them the geese's dinnertime is after their own.
As Posy dashes off with plans to draw geese and dresses and flowers - or geese in dresses with flowers? - Hazelle turns back to him with a knowing shake of her head. "We'd better get to work before we're hassled out of supplies and time."
"You were due for a break," Haymitch reminds her.
"I'll give you a tour, then." She takes him and her water into what would be the study. There are sewing instruments and spools of fabric and boxes of clothes everywhere yet somehow it's not that messy.
"Figures," he mutters, and shakes his head when she raises her brow in question. "So the commission is officially under way?"
She nods with a look around the room. "As of yesterday, yes."
"Good. Let me know when there are more boxes at the train station." He knows now not to offer anything past that, judging from what he saw earlier that week. As people lined up waiting to get measured by Hazelle, he and the kids visited, willing to help. But she'd had enough between her own kids, who recorded names and numbers and fetched supplies and directed people through the house. They acted as a well-oiled machine, and it gave him some insight into how their household operated in the Seam.
Seeing Hazelle manage them so well, doling out age-appropriate tasks that were actually useful to her effort, was kind of interesting. Haymitch wouldn't know how to do that. He always struggled with the younger tributes, aged between Vick and Rory, the most. He has no recent experience with kids as young as Posy until, well, Posy. So he has no bearing for how much she understands about the world; Hazelle once had to correct her that Haymitch was Katniss' mentor, not her dad. Fortunately for him, late teenagers are just younger, moodier adults with poorer judgment, and those are what he's stuck with.
"I will," replies Hazelle. "I could use some extra hands for scrap quilts later. If there's enough, Madea will send them to other districts as well."
"Very ambitious." Haymitch nods a little as he looks around, already impressed with the plan knowing that it'll follow through with Hazelle involved. He asked what she wanted to do with the new world, and she's responded readily once she found her answer. He sees something sheer and black and lacy on top of an opened box. "Have the generous people of the Capitol given you much to actually work with?"
"Yes - if not by quality, then by quantity." She follows his eyes. "People need underwear, too, you know."
"I have my pick."
Hazelle tells him that's the box for scraps. "I finished sorting through all the clothes yesterday to see what will be scrapped, fortified, or left alone. So far, those are all that's being left as is." She gestures to a single tower of boxes in the corner.
He chuckles dryly at the sight. "So they condescended us in donating their used lingerie but kept their winter coats even if they're out of style?"
"I've been reluctant to use this phrase," says Hazelle, "but beggars can't be choosers. And you better believe I sanitized everything as it came through. Thank goodness for the washing machine," she adds with an absent grasp of her fingers. He can't imagine the hours invested in her old washboard.
"How about the rest of the tour?" suggests Haymitch, his voice too soft in his mouth. He clears his throat. "Unless that was it."
"It wasn't. Saved the best for last." Hazelle retrieves a sketchbook from beside the sewing machine and flips to an earmarked page. Haymitch peers over her shoulder as she points out designs. They seem familiar, and he realizes with a bittersweet twist in his stomach that they are Cinna's. "I want to make clothes like these one day." She lays a finger beside a frock the color of moss. "This one, for Posy."
He can almost picture the little girl dizzying herself to twirl in it. "Are you going to make yourself something nice as well?"
"Sure, once I get around to it." She turns to him, and he takes a step back. "Not that we have much occasion nowadays."
He shrugs. "There's still New Year's and first dates."
"Don't you start with that; Alice is in my ear enough." She sighs, shakes her head. "And now I know the pants size of almost every man in the district. Shall I get yours, too?" She appears to be only half-joking despite the hard look he gives her.
"Um, no. I don't need anything." Not to mention the thought of her winding measuring tape around his hips or up the length of his legs or whatever else embarrasses him in a way her handling his laundry never did.
Unbothered, she says, "You will someday."
"Well, save your resources until then. Did you get your own sizing?"
Hazelle rolls her eyes in that understated way of hers. "Yes, Haymitch. I know I need a winter coat, too. I'm not selfless enough to pass one up like someone I know."
He barks a laugh and crosses his arms at the accusation. "My old coat serves me just fine, Hazelle. Not to mention I've been selfish this entire summer, receiving treatment and goodwill that I don't deserve."
She considers him for the span of a breath. "Taking care of yourself ain't selfish."
"Unless it's at the expense of others," he counters. They both know he's familiar with that, having killed to survive before.
"Is the whole district selfish for needing clothes and accepting what's willingly offered, then? You don't see me complaining, either." While making a stern point, her face is so earnest that it bothers him more than he cares to admit.
Haymitch waves a hand hastily. "Point is, I haven't been very selfless as of late. That's all. We should get to work now." Not waiting for an answer, he plucks a needle and a pin from a pushpin and scoops some buttons from a tin, then drops into a chair with Annalise's shirt.
While Hazelle resumes her own work, Haymitch grumbles his way through threading the needle and begins sewing on the missing buttons. They won't match but they'll fit the buttonholes. He doubts Annalise will mind.
To hear Hazelle tell it, nobody's going to look quite right in their mix of regular and fortified clothes come autumn. But they'll be warm in coats and quilts that aren't threadbare or falling apart, and pneumonia won't wipe out the district for good. All because of this woman who's scrapping clothes, dissecting their seams and cutting their frills into more workable shapes.
Haymitch muses that she showed the same diligence when she cleaned his house. He's glad she's found something much more significant - bigger than her, as she said once - to direct her energy toward instead. And there's no lye soap involved.
Vick returns with Greasy Sae and Annalise in tow. As she circles them with her tape measure, Hazelle updates Sae that the Grants are waiting on their order for the sheep, and that Ralph - one of the workers from Seven - will craft a spinning wheel with his apprentice. Sae seems eager to give her arthritic hands something worthwhile to do. Annalise seems eager to grab the tape measure and wind it around her hands. Hazelle compromises with some ribbon. Vick jots down the measurements as she calls them out, then heads upstairs to clean his room and the bathroom so he can have a sleepover. Sae leaves with her granddaughter, the finished button-up shirt, and an amused look at Haymitch that he doesn't bother offsetting.
Before he can decide whether to leave as well, Hazelle hands him a ripped pair of pants. "Speaking of Ralph..." He accepts it with an inward sigh of relief. "This is the last of it for now. Thank you again."
"No customer complaints yet?" asks Haymitch, and she shakes her head amidst the mountain range of clothing. "Well, you did only give me the simple fixes."
"Still time saved," she says. "Will Katniss and Peeta go to you for repairs now?"
"Haven't offered." He aligns the tear, mindful not to stick his thumb with a pin. "I don't think the girl's even noticed."
"Katniss doesn't tend to look at people closely if she can help it."
"Least of all me. She's afraid she'll see herself or something melodramatic like that." Though only he can sew between the two of them - whereas only the girl can stomach handling animal entrails.
"You are a lot alike," Hazelle tells him, and her knowing expression only brightens with amusement at his glare. Over the past two years, Haymitch has heard that and denied it for Katniss' sake, and now that he's convinced as well, he doesn't want to be reminded. "Explains why I get along with both of you so well."
"You must like being the most morally upright one in the room. The boy's like that, too."
"No," Hazelle drawls. She cants her head in thought for a moment, her eyes and hands still on task. "I've always been drawn to people with nerve. Didn't have much of it myself growing up."
When she looks over, Haymitch is emoting mock disbelief. She levels him with a look as if to showcase what now steels her usual composure. Relenting with a vestigial smirk, he says, "I can tell you've grown a whole spine since."
"Thanks. Standing up to my mother and becoming one at the same time really did the trick."
He admires what courage that must have taken, challenging Dorothy Monalow on her deathbed, as he's come to learn. That would seem low with anyone other than her mother, who probably used dying wishes to goad Hazelle into following her every demand.
"Well, the spine suits you. Almost like you were made for one," he says while Hazelle everts a frilly yellow dress.
Without looking up, she replies, "Well, the heart suits you."
Haymitch furrows his brow, confused. That scarred, mangled thing his kids exposed when they unwittingly pried open his chest isn't anything new. And try as he might, he's never been heartless.
Hazelle splays the dress out on the table before she says, "You're more willing to listen to it nowadays."
He doesn't want to think about any of that too closely - what she's noticed, whether she's right, what it means if she is…
Instead, he quips with a tone of finality, "Must have new ears, then."
Hazelle just smiles as she tugs the skirt tauter across the table. She wields a seam ripper and begins disassembling the dress stitch by stitch.
Beside her, Haymitch pushes and pulls the needle through denim. His hands are steady enough nowadays but they tend to lock and spasm whenever he's intent on fine motor control for too long like this. He has to flex them every now and then under the table.
He compares this to almost destroying a family heirloom two hours ago and thinks, How's that for adaptive coping, Wendell?
At least spending time with a friend has staved off that gnawing thirst. With no immediate access to alcohol, Haymitch doesn't have much choice but to stay his hand. He knows there are other chemical escapes that can serve as substitutes - Wendell warned him all about them - but they're either just as inaccessible out here in Twelve or something he finds no pleasure in these days.
He glances up as he ties off the stitch. Across the table now, Hazelle is consulting some notes. Her eyes drift back and forth. He's noticed they're darker than Katniss' and probably his own - so maybe Annie is onto something there. The way her head is turned offers some of her side profile: the high angle of her cheekbones and the steep, convex contour of her nose. Between them is a small mole that he doesn't remember her having as a girl. She's becoming familiar to him again - or rather, as she is now. But sometimes little details like this take him by surprise, in a different way than suddenly yearning for a stiff drink.
He folds the pants haphazardly and tosses them onto the table. Hazelle looks over at him as he rises. "I'll go and give the geese a rundown on manners here in a bit. Thanks for," he nods toward the table, "you know."
"That's what friends do," she says with a half-shrug.
"Guess so." He chuckles at them, at all of it. "Is this anything like you expected?"
"No. I didn't have much in mind," she admits, a little sheepish. Then she shifts uneasily, her notes limp and forgotten in her hands. "Always knew there was a chance it wouldn't work out, especially after you told me that whatever I did for you wouldn't matter now that I was safe."
"I said that?"
Hazelle nods, matter-of-fact, but her lips press together at the memory. "Almost word for word from that night you blacked out."
Haymitch shakes his head at himself. Maybe he thought that for one dark, bitter moment. And it's stupid to assume she'd be exempt from his tendency to fire off whatever he thinks will cut deep enough when he's mad and wants someone who's gotten too close to leave. But it doesn't reflect how he sees the matter with her sober. She must know that by now.
In case she doesn't, he tells her, "Blackout me didn't know shit. That's why I never bothered remembering what he thought or did." He smirks at how she can't decide whether to scold him or laugh and so ends up snorting with reproach. Then, softer, "It's mattered a lot."
He ignores the urge to dull this sentiment; he's already committed to throwing out some restraint today. And he wants this - them - to work like how he wants staying sober to work, which involves some humility. He's forgone larger shreds of dignity for much less over the years.
With a hint of a smile, Hazelle returns to her notes. "I happened to come at a good time."
"Lucky for us, huh?" Haymitch tries not to think about how he would've ended up driving her and everyone else left in his life away if he hadn't come around on his own.
"I think so. Call me crazy, but I do like you."
"I like you, too," he admits through a skipped beat. Maybe he does have new ears. "But don't call me crazy or else Wendell will say I shouldn't be around you."
"At least you'd be listening to him."
Haymitch chuckles through his teeth at that. She's definitely got that new backbone.
In the back of his mind, he acknowledges that Hazelle Monalow didn't help him home after the executions or attend the funerals. Hazelle Hawthorne has had the good sense not to apologize for that. It would be apologizing for warranted fear and a dead president's crimes, and Haymitch doesn't want someone who was so powerless to feel torn up about that on his behalf.
Who, why, woe versus that happened so how will they go on from here.
Hazelle seems to have her answer, and it's more than Haymitch could hope for, for the two of them.
He spreads his hands and says, "We can call it even now, right?"
Seeing Hazelle temper her smile makes him smile himself. She nods once. "I'd say so. Not that that changes anything - unless this means I'm out an assistant."
"Nah. I am trying to make all your undue effort worth your while."
"It's not undue," she insists, which is as futile as him insisting that it is.
"Even still," he says, leaning against the table with folded arms, "your end of the deal has been goose shit and broken glass whereas mine's been needlework and coffee."
Hazelle turns to him fully, and his heart starts at how intent she is. Some tacky, bejeweled thing in the room refracts light in iridescent freckles across her neck and collarbones. She doesn't seem to notice as she says, "You got Katniss home. You were there to save Gale. I know none of that had anything to do with me. But it still mattered."
He almost forgot that Hazelle was there that night in the Everdeen kitchen. She had snowflakes in her hair while he was speckled with her son's blood and occupied with protecting Verbena and her rescue efforts from Katniss. The girl was the one throwing a fit about Gale and removed from the room, not his mother. Typical for both of them, really.
"Must have, to start a whole charity case over it." Haymitch suppresses a grimace at how brittle he must sound. But he dreads that this is what's really behind all her goodwill toward him, and he'd loathe accepting it then. Though it feels selfish of him either way.
"We could argue I was your charity case for less than that," she replies evenly, and he'll have to give her that. "But we're even. We've been even."
"In that regard. I still hope to be half the friend you've been to me, even when I was..." Somehow he can't say a drunken waste aloud. He's also not sure if he should be gallivanting in past tense as much as he is. A month ago is the past, he supposes, but barely. He's been dry that long and even longer before - never for good, though.
"A survivor like the rest of us," Hazelle finishes very definitively, and Haymitch could scoff at himself for the sudden warmth he feels deep in his chest. But he just shrugs his brow, all noncommittal, not knowing what else to do with that.
He pushes from the table and says that he'll leave her to her work and wait for them to feed the geese tonight.
"You weren't far off on what'll happen if one of them acts up," Hazelle tells him, a slight warning note in her tone, and he chuckles.
"And I wasn't lying about them being meaner to smaller folk. Hope your girl doesn't mind heights because she's sitting up on the coop."
Like that phone call from earlier, Haymitch doesn't feel worse when he leaves. He even feels better.
He might just have to go ahead and be selfish. It's the opposite of living against himself - so maybe it's the right direction after all.
