Chapter Text
I’m sitting in the armchair by the fireplace, the one that used to be gas but can’t quite shape up after the wreckage, when I feel an unannounced presence next to me. Though Katniss’s presence is always unannounced, even now.
“Don’t you have little mutts to attend to?” I ask her, the word feeling unsavory in my mouth even now.
“Peeta’s turn,” Katniss says simply, opening up the memory book. “Besides, even little mutts don’t get up before me.”
“When are you gonna learn how to sleep in?” I ask wryly, groaning as I sit up to get a better look at her. Lines have worn in around her face, a privilege for a victor, even more for a girl from the Seam. I look at her and see Burdock through and through, though older than I’d ever seen him. Prim always had the closer likeness to Asterid, pale eyes and hair, a stark contrast between the sisters. She sits at the dining table, cleared of bottles and food, a space for her and Peeta to work.
“Maybe when you learn to sleep without a bottle. I thought we talked about this,” She replies, wetting her brush with her homemade paste.
“You know it’s not the same as it was. Swear it.”
I stand and move to the seat next to her. I want to see the new page she’s working on, even if I’m still not too keen on the idea of the book. Besides, I can’t help but want to make sure nothing hurts her, even if it's just a memory. She pastes a photo down onto the page, and I feel a cold flush, guilt still my first instinct when seeing their faces and the bundle they were holding.
“I remember when they were that young. When I was too,” I say, not one to reminisce but knowing she liked to fill in the blanks. “You’d just been born.”
𓂃 ོ☼𓂃
My eyes wander the sky, tracing constellations I’d once pointed out to Sid, my hand guiding his as I told him the stories Tam Amber had told Lenore Dove and she had told me. The warmth of the alcohol in my gut is no longer fighting against the cooler September nights, and I shiver at the breeze gliding through the meadow and wish I’d brought a coat.
The grass beneath me is starting to turn to straw, no longer the lush green of spring and summer, but dead, dying. Dying like I felt every day without my Lenore Dove, dead like she is in the ground beneath me. They say time is supposed to heal all wounds, but mine just keeps getting bigger. It’s like whatever they did in the Capitol to put me back together was just a pretty veneer for everyone else; I know they put it back all wrong.
The games being long over, and the victory tour still a ways off, gave me a sense of uneasy peace, a purgatory between the hell of the bloodbath and Capitol frivolities. I’d lost them again this year. The boy was small and the girl smaller, both from the Seam and both starving. They were reaped through tesserae entries, no doubt after the year we’d had. I huffed and threw an arm over my eyes to block out the sky and the sick realization that I hadn’t bothered to feel hopeful for my tributes this year. It made it easier at the time; it made it easier now. It’d been years since I’ve heard from Plutarch, or Beetee, poor man. I always thought losing sight of the rebellion would push me over the edge, break my spirit and the promise I made to Lenore Dove, but somehow it was easier.
I feel it before I understand what's happening. There’s a sharp sting in the arm I don’t have strewn over my face, and I taste coins on my tongue. I fling the foreign body off on instinct, and my eye catches the glint of rainbow on black scales as it disappears into the brush. Snake bite.
I can hear my blood rushing in my ears as I try to sit up, my stomach protesting. Bile rises in my throat as my arm starts to ache like there’s no end in sight. My eyelids are heavy, and it would be so easy just to lie here, for it to all end while I’m next to my Lenore Dove. I turn my head to her gravestone, and the etchings carve into my chest as I read them:
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
I lift my arm to my face, the appendage screaming in protest. The swelling is intense, but I can still see those two little marks. I almost laugh, and then I do. I once had the strength, the will to hold my own guts to my body, and two little puncture holes seemed pathetic. I remember my promise, my duty, thinking about how my dove would’ve laughed too. How she wouldn’t have hesitated to suck the venom out and laugh at me for being such a baby.
But what to do?
The victor’s village was too far, and damn them all if he would have to have a peacekeeper patch him up. There might be someone at the Hob if he could make it there, but who would know how to treat a snake bite?
Asterid. Between her and Burdock, they’d know what to do. No, no, he couldn’t go there, the last time I’d seen them, he scarred Asterid’s pretty face, and Burdock had never forgiven him. The last kindness my best friend ever showed was the location of this exact spot. I wrack my brain for another solution, but the ache is only getting worse, and I fear that if I don’t get up now, I never will.
I use my good arm to hoist myself up with a low-hanging branch. When I make it to my feet, I nearly fall right back down, my legs feeling like lead. I don’t know how I carry one foot in front of the other, but I do. It’s the loose spot in the fence that nearly does me in, my weight pitching forward as I bend down to get under it. I nearly catch myself with my good arm, but not before it slips out from under me, and I come face to face with a fresh patch of mud.
I can only imagine how wild I look, stumbling through the Seam towards Burdock’s place with my swollen arm held close to my chest. Dark eyes peer at me through curtains and windows, but none stop to help, and I don’t blame them; that’s not the way around here.
By the time I reach what acts as their door, I can only manage an incoherent yell before I fall inside. I hit the ground with a thud, and high-pitched wails erupt, causing my already aching head to pound. With that sound, I remember the baby, Burdock’s little girl. The way he showed her off at the Hob like a prized hunt.
Blonde hair, blue eyes and a slack jaw blur together as I look up.
“Haymitch?” I hear.
“I never…said…congratulations.”
~ ປ ~
My ears seem to wake up before the rest of me, tiny coos and gurgles fill the space as my eyes struggle to refocus. My mind immediately goes to my arm, and I look to see it bandaged and realize the majority of the pain is gone. My eyes slide around the room until they reach Asterid, sitting in a wooden rocking chair with a baby in her arms, eyes firmly on me.
“How are you feeling?”
“I feel–” I nearly hack up a lung before I can say ‘bad.’
“Drink that,” She nods to the bottles beside me, her hands full of squirming child. I grab the only one that looks like something I’d want to drink, and Asterid stands suddenly.
“Not the antiseptic! The water!” She puts the baby down in a nearby bassinet and strides over quickly.
I bark out a laugh and put the bottle down, trading it for the other. “Antiseptic is just as good.”
“Burdock is out hunting. You should leave before he gets back.”
She’s right, I should go, but I still feel that dull ache, and I can’t help but want to rest my sore eyes on an old friend a little longer. Chances are I’ll never see her again, at least not from this close. I keep an eye on things around the district; there’s not much else to do. My sight sets on the baby, her dark hair and olive skin clear as day, even with how small she is.
“What’s her name?” I ask cautiously. It’s not quite curiosity that makes me ask, but rather a masochistic tendency. Was Burdock bold enough?
“Katniss”
“Like the swamp potato?” I tease, but part of me feels relief. Katniss, just Katniss.
“It was Burdock’s idea, and I liked it,” Asterid replies. She says it with a quality in her voice that those from town get.
“And what do your folks think of it?”
“They think of it the same as they thought of me being with Burdock,” She says, narrowing her eyes at him, “Or at least I assume, I haven’t spoken to them since the wedding.”
Wedding is a loose term in the Seam. In town, they can afford to go to the courthouse, maybe wear a dress of a different color. I wasn’t invited to their wedding, but I know it didn’t look anything as official as that. I look down at the baby.
“She looks nothing like you, you know,” I say it fondly. Asterid’s always been pretty, but Burdock’s like kin.
“She’s all Burdock, stubborn like him, too,” Asterid says fondly too. She knows his ways. “Never cries”
“Except because of me.”
“Except because of you,” Asterid echoes with a knowing smirk. The rhythm we’re in, it reminds me of old times. I was distrustful of her, being from town and all, but I knew she was good people by the way I could tease her. Maysilee was the same.
“I’m sorry about the rock and how I treated you both,” I say, looking down. I’ve never been good at apologies.
“Everything around me seems to die,” I add with a laugh before sobering up, “Couldn’t risk it.”
“Don’t think I didn’t know that was why,” She says, picking up the baby. Asterid holds the bundle close like someone might take the child away. “Your poor Lenore Dove… appendicitis. I don’t believe it for a second.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that,” I say, a little too sharply. I look at the baby in her arms, and I know she sees me do it. “It’s best I get going, can’t risk being seen here by any Peacekeepers.”
“That’s all you had to say, you know? Back then. We would’ve understood,”
“Burdock wouldn’t have,” I call back to her from the doorway. “You know that.”
“Don’t be a stranger, Haymitch,” She says, even though we both know I will.
“Goodbye, Asterid. I’m sorry again.”