Chapter Text
Upside to being a notorious drunk is you can do any fool thing you want and most people’ll just discount it. Blame the bottle, treat the drunk like a child who doesn’t know what nonsense is coming out of his mouth. Which is why, when Haymitch sees Burdock’s girl is seconds from crying on camera, he stumbles onstage and starts spouting his nonsense. “Look at her! Look at this one!” he shouts, grabbing her around the shoulders.
It’s the first time he’s ever touched the girl— not like Burdock was about to let Haymitch hold his baby, not after what he did to Asterid— and she’s tense under his palm, tense and twitchy like a rabbit. She’s not going to bolt, though. If she really wanted to live she’d’ve kept her mouth shut.
“I like her! Lots of…” Guts . Slimy and sliding out of her abdomen while she lays dying, disemboweled in the arena. Burdock’s baby girl. “Spunk! More than you!” he yells, marching toward the front of the stage, anything he can do to get the spotlight off the poor kid who just didn’t want to see her sister dead. “More than you!” he yells, pointing toward the camera. Look at me. Don’t look at her. Don’t use her tears for your entertainment .
Downside to being a notorious drunk— his sense of balance is shit. There’s no “functioning” to his alcoholic. But at least when he slips and careens off the stage, he’s still providing a spectacle for the people. Giving Burdock’s girl two seconds out of her fifteen minutes to get herself straight.
The girl has none of her father’s charm or her mother’s grace. She’s loud and sullen and blunt, and getting the fine shiny people of the Capitol to like her is going to be damn near impossible. But the challenge of making other people like her isn’t the worst part.
The worst part is that Haymitch likes her. The fire in her.
Watching them die bloody is unbearable already, every year, but this one— this one’s going to hurt special.
Katniss comes back from the private session with the Gamemakers and locks herself in her room, and no one can get the story out of her until dinner. The name “sweetheart” spills out of him before he can bite his tongue to stop it, and he can tell she hates hearing it nearly as much as he hated saying it.
She’s not Louella. Nobody was Louella but Louella . Patently untrue. He reaches for the wine.
It's amazing, the things the Capitol can do with cosmetic surgery and costuming. That District 11 girl they wheeled out all those years ago was made to look just like Louella McCoy. All that effort they went to. Doesn’t matter.
In all this time, Haymitch has come to learn that the Capitol plays tricks they don't even know they're playing. They don’t need to bother with cheek filler. Every tribute girl from Twelve looks like Louella to him. He finds her in all of them. The Seam girl he mentored last year sat in that same seat where Katniss is now and asked him for advice on dying with a brave face. I know I have to die, but I don’t wanna die a coward .
Katniss is scared. She shot an arrow up at the Gamemakers and she’s worried they’ll arrest her for it. Arrest her . Ha.
If they were going to kill her, they’d’ve done it already. If they were going to swap her out— He squints, peers at her face. And he might be drunk, but that’s still Burdock’s daughter. Same eyes.
“Be a pain to replace you at this stage,” he tells her.
The gong sounds. The Games begin. And even though Haymitch told the kids over and over not to go for the Cornucopia, to get away and get water, there’s a nasty, broken part of him that wants them to defy him. Wants them to run straight into that bloodbath and die quick. Let the nightmare be over for them so he can check out for the rest of the show.
They survive the first day, the little bastards. He stays mostly sober. Capitolites congratulate him on what a good showing his district is giving this year. The little lovebirds , they call the kids. I just love the little lovebirds from District 12.
He talks to bettors and spectators and sponsors, gets a feel for what people want to see. Some of them want Katniss Everdeen to win. Some of them want the little lovebirds to die in each other’s arms, your classic doomed romance. Everybody loves a tragedy.
Onscreen, Burdock’s daughter proves herself a stubborn survivalist. Helps that the arena’s similar to the woods back home. She hasn’t even had to kill anybody yet. He thinks about the little girl in the Hob with her pigtail braids and wonders what it’ll do to her, the first life she takes.
The girl on fire gets burned. Badly.
She needs medicine. And he’ll bend down and kiss every ass in the Capitol to get it to her. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. Burdock would never forgive him if he lets her die now.
Which is a crazy thing to think, anyway. Burdock never did forgive him for the gash he opened up on Asterid’s pretty face. And besides, he’s dead and gone. Just like everyone else who ever had the bad luck to care about Haymitch Abernathy.
Schmoozing with sponsors gets him enough to send Katniss some balm for the burns. Maybe he can’t stop her from dying, but he can at least spare her some pain in the meantime.
Watching Katniss sing to the dying girl— to Rue— stirs something in Haymitch that he can’t choke back down. He finds his fingers fumbling for the flask in his jacket pocket before he remembers that Effie took it away.
Deep in the meadow, under the willow…
She already proved she had her father’s talent with a bow, but now she confirms she inherited his pipes as well. She has a Covey girl’s voice. And the one bitter satisfaction he can drain from it is the knowledge that President Snow is watching the same show. Probably thinking of the Covey girl he couldn’t cage.
He’ll never let her live now , he thinks. Or he will. And it’ll be so much worse.
It’s what Katniss does after the girl from District 11 dies that has Haymitch reaching not for his flask, but for the sleeve of Effie’s dress. Like he can’t hold himself up anymore. This time, she doesn’t push him off. She’s watching the screen, just as transfixed, as Katniss meticulously arranges bunches of wildflowers and weeds around Rue’s body.
His heart hammers in his chest, clanging against his ribcage like a fist knocking on a door. Happy birthday, Haymitch. Happy birthday, Haymitch . Suddenly, he is carrying Louella’s body down the parade route, laying her in front of President Snow. Suddenly, he is grabbing Lou Lou’s corpse and running, struggling to give her just a scrap of dignity in death.
Little girls from District 11. Underfed. Dead.
That they’ve actually televised Katniss’s goodbye to Rue is huge. Frightening. He finds himself wondering if Plutarch is behind it. Does Katniss even know the kind of poster she’s painting? She was so worried for her family after firing that arrow at the Gamemakers, but what about now? Does she know?
Chaff finds him, eyes red from crying or drinking, Haymitch isn’t sure. District 11’s mentor won his Games five years before Haymitch, and they’ve made a yearly habit out of sharing woes and spirits. “We want to send her some bread,” he says. “Your girl on fire.”
There’s something else going on. Something big. After all these years, Haymitch recognizes how people talk when they know there are ears in the walls. “Sure that got a lot of attention back home.”
His fellow mentor nods. “Everybody’s watching,” he says. “You know what the Games bring out in people.”
And now Haymitch is certain there are riots happening in District 11. Whippings. Hangings. But Chaff is asking to send bread to Katniss, and there’s a lot more to it than just getting her the calories. “It’s done,” he says.
He’s sitting sandwiched between Effie and Chaff, watching, when Claudius Templesmith announces the rule change. Effie crows with excitement— both their kids can win!
Haymitch just exchanges a look with Chaff. What’s the play here? Placation? The Capitol adores Katniss and Peeta’s star-crossed lovers story. If they can walk out of this together, it’ll be a sign of mercy from the Gamemakers. A reminder that President Snow has a heart, after all, that no one can resist the draw of young love.
Bread and circuses, while riots rage in Eleven.
He feels sick. Maybe he should be as gleeful as Effie about the news. For the first time ever, he could be going back home with not just one, but two survivors. Two kids to make up for the forty-six he’s lost.
And then what? What inventive ways will Snow dream up to use them against each other?
“To hear Peeta tell it, you have quite a bit in common with our girl on fire.” Caesar Flickerman is all smiles, leaning over the arm of his chair casually, like they're friends. Like he hasn't sat here every year, grinning as he sends Haymitch’s tributes to their bloody ends. The greatest showman.
Well, Haymitch is a showman too. He’s even sober, mostly. For this. “I’m just hoping the similarities continue,” he says, making a show of crossing his fingers. “I like to think we’re both winners, me and her.”
“And Peeta?”
“Well, I’d hate to see anything split up the happy couple.”
But he knows. He knows, in the gleam of Caesar’s pearly white teeth, in the artificial shine of everything in this place, only one of those kids is making it out. Maybe neither. And Peeta’s hell-bent on making sure he dies before Katniss.
(Wellie’s lifeless eyes staring as her head swings—)
Nobody gets to choose who wins. Haymitch learned that the hard way. And if Peeta’s determined to put Katniss forward as the victor… well, Haymitch is prepared to make that train ride home with just the boy. Knowing how he feels. Knowing he couldn't have stopped it even though he tried.
Peeta was right.
Katniss is exactly like Haymitch.
He watches her stuff the berries in her mouth, choking on his own ghosts and gumdrops, and knows that she’s finally— maybe fatally— playing the real game. She is daring the Capitol to defy her, fully aware that the entire country is watching her blatant act of rebellion.
She makes her statement and she saves the boy, too.
Snow is going to ruin this girl.
Peeta heals. Rumors fly. Haymitch drinks.
Suddenly he's screaming at the Gamemakers for suggesting they plug the girl’s breasts full of silicone. Plump her up like a prize pig. Maybe in the beginning Peeta’s schoolboy crush was enough to make his fellow tribute desirable, but now that she’s a victor they need more from her.
Burdie, look at that, they're gonna whore your girl all over the Capitol.
A tray of scalpels and other medical implements clatters to the floor, and it takes Haymitch a second for time to catch up with him to recognize that he shoved it. “She’s a child,” he’s yelling, twenty-four years of holding his tongue all spilling out like coughed-up blood. They can’t do shit to him right now, not the mentor of the first two tributes to ever win the Hunger Games as a team . Nobody left who loves him. He’s untouchable . “She’s a skinny, starved child and you don’t get to hide that by making her some kind of sex symbol. What’re you gonna do once you’re done with the chest, huh? Make her taller? Bleach her skin?”
“Mr. Abernathy, please—”
“Keep your filthy hands off me. And keep your filthy hands off her .”
He’d be worried about his outburst putting Katniss in danger, but she has already put herself in enough danger as it is. And Cinna smooths things over. He’s good at making things look pretty. Put the girl in a nice costume. Make sure everybody sees that she is a child . Not a rebel. Not a mastermind. Not a malcontent.
Just a girl in love.
“This is your night, sweetheart. Enjoy it.”
He presses his lips to Katniss’s forehead and wishes he could give her something more than a warning. He’s been playing this game since he was her age and hasn’t found a way out yet. Now she and Peeta are trapped here with him. Misery loves company .
Later, he watches Katniss making nice with all the Capitolites and she’s actually— convincing. Charming. Not a people person at all, but a survivalist. She can adapt. He recalls his own attendance at the Capitol celebrations following his win, and he reaches for the flask in his jacket.
What happens now? He thinks about Primrose and Asterid. No, they won’t kill the girl, they can’t. Whole country saw Katniss volunteer in her place. Not like Sid, edited out of the reaping footage. Her mother, though. Plenty of folks in Twelve self-medicate, most of them with stuff that she supplies. Maybe she overdoes it. Maybe she overdoses, maybe something lethal slithers into her bottle of sleep syrup. Would you like a gumdrop, Asterid ?
The train ride back to Twelve has him bleary-eyed and white-knuckling white liquor, jumping back to alertness every now and then to remind Katniss that she’s okay, she’s alive, and she’s still performing. He doesn’t sleep all the way at all. Weak and weary. Nearly napping . Burdock’s daughter made it out of the Capitol, but Burdock had two daughters and a widow and they’re all on the chopping block now.
The boy she hunts with, the Hawthorne boy. He’s in danger, too. Peeta’s brothers. Otho Mellark. The mayor’s daughter. It all ripples out and out and out, every friend and neighbor a shiny morsel for Snow to take away.
Damn it all.
The first miracle is that Asterid Everdeen is alive and well in District 12. Katniss’s house is still standing. There have been no suicides, no great tragedies. For the first time in the history of the Hunger Games, a district has nobody to mourn.
The second miracle comes a week later, when the cameras finally go away. There are still Peacekeepers, of course, and it’s not like Snow’s fist is going to unclench any time soon. But Katniss stops holding Peeta’s hand with that desperate grit to her teeth. Effie hugs Haymitch and kisses him on the cheek and leaves town, just like always, a few stray rhinestones in her wake.
And the third miracle is that Haymitch gets to sit in his house in Victor’s Village, alone, expected by nobody, answering to no one but old ghosts. “There you go, Burdie,” he mumbles into the gloom, reaching for a bottle. “I got her out.”
Not like it makes a difference. Not like he's saved her from anything but rest and respite. All he's done is damn her to the same hell he's been living in for twenty-four years.
“I got them both out.”