Hunger Games Fic: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil (4/11)
Title: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil
Author: millari
Characters: Haymitch Abernathy, Mags, Beetee, Chaff, President Snow, Haymitch's Dad, Haymitch's Girl, OCs
Pairing: Haymitch/Beetee
Rating: R
Beta: The highly awesome and beautiful trovia
Warnings: Implied references to forced prostitution, canonical character deaths
Summary: On his victory tour, Haymitch soon finds out that the real Games have only just begun, and survival means learning to spin out a web of lies, compromises and self-destruction. The Games' oldest living victor and arguably its most intelligent one show him that even in the tainted life of a Victor, there are still ways to prevail.
A/N: This is a finished multi-chaptered work that is posting about once per week.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
CHAPTER 4
He's chopping more unnecessary wood one day when a Peacekeeper arrives at his house with a carefully folded letter on stiff, white parchment, bearing a gold-leaf stamp that has the straight, hard angles of the Capitol. The stamp is imprinted with the letters “LB”.
Haymitch swallows hard, knowing already what it says: his Victory Tour begins in a month.
Dear Haymitch,
I can't believe that already five months have gone by and it is almost time for us to meet
again. In less than optimal news, I have as yet to be promoted, but the bright spot I am quite looking forward to seeing you again. I've been busy, busy, busy with preparations for the last two weeks! I special-ordered four new wigs. Of course, a District Twelve posting doesn't pay nearly enough to afford that, but I am good at scrimping when I need to, and well, you don't see a District Twelve victor every day, now do you?
Anyway, I'm writing you now to remind you to get any of your affairs in order, because you'll be gone for at least a month and a half, perhaps two if you are as popular in some of the Districts as I believe you will be; and then of course, there's the finale in the Capitol, where you'll be attending parties and getting some advance information on mentoring. Don't worry about clothes and makeup; your stylist and prep team will be coming too and you know they'll get you back up to Capitol standards in no time.
Say hello to your family for me, and tell your mother I would love to pump her for some more information about you before we leave; I didn't really get a chance on Reaping Day (the Reapings always move so fast), and the more I know about you, the more it can only help with my publicity efforts.
Ta-ta!
Lucilla
That night, he goes back into the Hob, looking for the men he knows will have cards and as much as he hates to admit it to himself, liquor. He brings with him plenty of money; so it doesn't take him long to be sitting at a table in in the back of the marketplace in his pristine wool trench coat with a hand of cards and a shot of home-brewed whisky in front of him. The talk is small and sporadic, as the talk among people who are concentrating on card games for money tends to be, but it includes joking and banter, and it includes him sometimes; it's the closest thing Haymitch has had to innocuous conversation in months.
To his surprise, he leaves the shot glass untouched, but returns the next night to the games, hungry to take risks where the consequences mean little to him. In fact, he finds that the more money he loses at these games, the more teasing and camaraderie is directed his way. He becomes the amusing, clever kid among the inveterate old gamblers who laugh at his sarcasm and his cocky bets. He's the easy mark for the middle-aged hustlers who make book at the Reapings, and then during the rest of the year, glean an
easy buck wherever they can.
Every minute he's there - for three straight weeks - is a minute he's not obsessed with thoughts of the upcoming Victory Tour or memories of the arena. Alsey's face doesn't contort with the pain when he's hoping for exactly the right card. When he's surrounded by the laughter and backslapping of old men, he's not remembering his mother telling him how his father never means to hit them, he's just in pain.
He always stays late into the night, because he never worries about running out of money, and as a bonus, the nightmares decrease some, now that he's stumbling into bed completely exhausted, without liquor even.
The last night before Lucilla is expected to arrive, Haymitch loses all his stakes in a spectacularly long night of ribald jokes, good-natured rivalries and some serious betting wars. Why not, he figures?
Tomorrow he'll be on a train filled with more food than he could eat in a year and all manner of finery will be provided to him free of charge. He walks home in the pitch black of a cloudy night, whistling pleasantly to himself. He stops dead though, at the sight of his house.
He knows he didn't leave the lights on.
He feels around for a substantial rock on the ground, suspecting one of the many criminals he's been socializing with lately. Someone must have figured out by now that it would be easier to relieve him of his money all at once instead of little by little at cards. He finds he's strangely looking forward to a fight. He gets a tiny adrenaline rush and feels for a moment like he's back in the arena.
But when he walks inside and sees the man with the paper-white hair sitting in the most comfortable chair in his living room, the rock falls from his hand and tumbles loudly on the wood floor.
“Mister Abernathy.” President Snow's voice is calm, deliberate and with just a touch of the Capitol accent. It's not like Lucilla's, though. On him, it doesn't sound frivolous at all.
“Won't you have a seat? I'd like to talk.”
When Haymitch can move again, he walks slowly towards the President of Panem, hands in fists at his sides. When he's about three feet away from the chair, he takes the running leap for Snow's throat he's been planning for months in his head. He doesn't even worry anymore about the consequences. What does he have left to live for?
So he feels surprised and confused, and cheated when the very air slams right into his face, and his ears fill with an ever-so-slight hum. There is debilitating pain all over his body. Snow doesn't have a mark on him, though, because Haymitch never even got close enough to touch him.
“Forgive me,” Snow apologizes, as calm and quiet as ever. “I have a weakness for irony.”
Haymitch stands there in bewilderment, gingerly touching his aching nose. While he contemplates the possibility that it's broken, he realizes what has happened: Snow has himself surrounded with a force field, like the one that protected the walls of the arena. Except this one doesn't allow things to enter and bounce back.
This one is like running into a flat, unyielding wall.
“Was the setting too high?” Snow asks, shaking his head, as if full of concern. “Regrettable. But I wouldn't worry. A visible bruise or two is always a good image for a victor. Makes you look like a fighter.”
“You killed my mother and my brother and Alsey!” Haymitch snarls in disbelief at him. He wants to try to smash through that force field, but he knows it will be no use. “And you're talking to me about my image?”
“Do not discount the power of image, Mister Abernathy. It carves attitudes into people far more deeply than any blade, which is precisely why I am here today in fact - to discuss image.”
His words are delivered with an air of tedium, as if he's Haymitch's father - a refined, intelligent version of his father, that is - who's tired and a bit annoyed to be explaining the basics of the world for the umpteenth time.
“Why are you doing this?” Haymitch wants to rail at him, but the words come out more like begging. “I know you killed them all to punish me, why? What did I do that was so terrible?”
Snow raises an eyebrow.
“What? Just because I found out how your damn game worked? Even Cantebury didn't care!”
There is another long silence.
“Artemis Cantebury is a skilled Gamesmaker, one of the most skilled we've had in years,” Snow observes. “The Games arena is where his strengths lie. Luckily, I do not need Artemis in the arena of politics, where he would have perished on Day One.” He cocks his head. “You disappoint me, young man. I must admit. I thought you skilled at seeing the bigger picture.”
The man is as unruffled as he is at the Games, or on television appearances. It's enraging. Haymitch picks up the rock that he dropped earlier, even though they both know it will not do any good, and Snow does not even flinch as Haymitch draws his arm back, roaring, and throws it as hard as he can against the force field anyway.
There is a loud disturbance in the hum, a loud, rippling sound, and the rock sits impotently on the floor in between them.
“Trying to join your family, are you?” Snow taunts, hands coming together in slow motion, fingers pressing themselves into a thoughtful steeple under his chin. “But we both know that you're not really the type for suicide; if you were, you wouldn't have won.”
Haymitch blinks a moment, then sinks into a chair opposite Snow. “I wasn't trying to make you mad, you know. Why would I do that?” He sighs deeply. “All I wanted was to get home.”
“Haymitch,” Snow says softly, again with that infuriating evenness. “We are going to be old friends for many years to come. I would hope that we didn't start out this relationship with lying.”
Haymitch stares at him, bewildered. “What are you talking about? I'm not lying.”
Snow shakes his head. “But you are,” he says, like it wounds him. A surreal part of Haymitch's brain wonders if Snow subjects his monstrous daughter to this kind of flat, emotionless lecturing.
“In the arena, you weren't just trying to get home, Mister Abernathy. You had something else much more rebellious in mind.”
“And what's that?” he snaps.
“You wanted to beat the Games.”
“So? That's how I was going to get home.”
Snow shakes his head, this time, seeming oddly genuine in his desire to explain. “Ordinary players want to beat the other players in the arena. But what you did has implications far beyond the arena, dangerous implications.”
“Then why didn't you just tell me to stop? Why go and kill all these people I care about? I would have done whatever you wanted.”
“You are doing whatever I want,” Snow reminds him.
Haymitch stops short at the truth of that.
Snow holds up an admonishing finger. “This isn't just about you anymore. The seeds of rebellion are sown when the ruling authority is made to look foolish or weak. By using your government’s creation against itself, you have accomplished the former. Because I must keep you alive, you have also managed the latter. But your insidious seeds will not be allowed to bloom. You are going to behave on this tour, and you are not going to draw attention to your clever antics in the arena. No one will ask you about it and you will not offer, is that clear?”
Haymitch slouches in the chair even further.
“Alsey, my Ma, Jackson,” he insists. “They had nothing to do with this. Why take your revenge on them?” His hands grip the arms of the chair he's sitting in until his knuckles turn white with tension. “They were the least rebellious people on the planet!”
Again, Snow's eyes narrow with disappointment. “Revenge?” he says with mild annoyance, as if he is offended by the choice of words, by Haymitch's denseness. “I've already told you, this isn't about you.” He shakes his head back and forth in slow movements. “This is about the fabric of our nation. The sooner you understand that, the smoother this will go.”
He sits back in his chair, looking Haymitch over like a lion considering its prey. “Your loved ones are dead because the people in this district, the other victors, they all need to see the consequences for the kind of thinking you displayed in the Games.”
“And what about in the Capitol?” Haymitch realizes suddenly. “Do they know that you killed the family of this year's victor?”
“Ah, that is a more subtle business,” he concedes. “You will especially not bring that up anywhere outside of District 12, by the way, or there will be more consequences, do you understand? The Capitol will find out in the way I deem most effective.”
Haymitch briefly wonders what that means. “So I keep quiet, or else what?” he challenges.
Instead of answering, Snow takes quiet assessment of him, sending a chill through Haymitch's body that is more unnerving than any verbal threats.
“You need me as mentor next year,” he insists, trying to keep the growing unease out of his voice. “They will notice if I am not there, the victor who saw through the game.”
Eventually, Snow nods, but it doesn't seem nearly enough like a concession for Haymitch's comfort.
“What else can you do to me?” he insists, worried that right now, Snow is right: he isn't able to see the bigger picture. There is a slight tremor in Haymitch's hands and he gives in to the compulsion to fill Snow's deliberate silences. “You've already killed everyone who means anything to me.”
“I am not so sure that that is true.” Snow raises an eyebrow. “You still have a father.”
At that, Haymitch laughs long and hard, more than is natural, in order to cover his sense of relief. “Go ahead,” he taunts. “He's a drunk who liked to hit me and my mother and who knows when he would have started in on my little brother too if you hadn't killed him. Notice how my father's not living here with me? There's plenty of reason for that.” When Snow doesn't respond, Haymitch adds self-consciously, “Seriously, you'd be doing me a favor.”
For the first time since Haymitch has ever met the President, the smile that blooms on Snow's face reaches all the way to his eyes. He seems genuinely pleased at something, like he's just gotten exactly what he wants for his birthday.
“I will keep that in mind, Mister Abernathy.”
The buzzing hum all around Snow flashes off and a couple of Peacekeepers materialize to escort him out.
“Oh, and by the way,” Snow says in parting. “Stop trying to play havoc with the local economy here. You won't be doing them any good in the long run, trust me.
He rises out of his chair with a formal dignity. “And watch the gambling,” he adds. “There's nothing more pathetic than a penniless victor.”
It shouldn't, given all the surveillance he lives under every day. But it amazes Haymitch to imagine President Snow sitting in his office with a viewscreen watching Haymitch buy food and play cards. “You seriously need to find better hobbies,” he snarls at him before he thinks better of it.
Snow chuckles with an air of indulgence, but his words come at Haymitch like the lash of a whip. “And so do you. I don't think you want any more blood on your hands, do you?”
Haymitch swallows hard.
“It's all your choice,” says Snow as he walks out the door. “It always has been.”
**
The next day, still shaken and feeling a mild sense of dread, Haymitch meets Lucilla's train.
The afternoon sun is an orange ball already starting to disappear under the horizon when the gleaming silver high-speed Capitol vehicle glides almost noiselessly to a stop in shabby District Twelve, and the only occupants are the woman herself - who arrives in a flurry of excitement, babbling, and an ever-changing parade of clothes and wigs - and the District Twelve prep team, who respond to him in a sort of chaotic unison with loud, dismayed cries of chagrin.
“Oh, for the love of the Capitol, Haymitch!” shrieks Lenta, his head stylist, in a tone so piercing, it turns the heads of the few Twelve residents running the station for this occasion. “How on earth did you even grow your hair out that long in six months?”
Haymitch just stops himself from cringing visibly with embarrassment. Lenta doesn't seem to notice as she reaches out and pulls at his hair, her fingers probing the texture of it like a buyer in the Hob checking a vegetable for rot.
“All that work,” sighs Preen next to her, a candy-colored wisp of a young woman only a few years older than Haymitch. “All for nothing.”
“Oh, nonsense.” Lucilla pats Lenta's shoulder reassuringly. “You worked miracles on him six months ago, you can do it again, right? I’m sure those wild curls of his are already shuddering at the sight of you, love.” But for the first time since his prep team styled him last year for his Games, Haymitch notices Lucillla gazing at his appearance again with a very Capitolesque look of snobbish distaste.
“Besides ...” Her pitch shoots up two octaves, and she devolves into childish singsong tones: “...we brought wardrobe!” She gestures towards the train. “We've converted a whole car into your dressing room, Haymitch. That's how much there is. You'll have plenty to choose from on each stop.”
He can't help gaping at her, then at the car. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the people in the station pretending not to watch them, as their expressions narrow into disdain.
“There's a car waiting,” he says quickly. “It'll take us to the Justice Hall.”
**
The first stop on his Victory Tour is District Eleven, where he is thrust upon a stage with Chaff - a dark-skinned, dark-haired victor from five years before. Haymitch notices that he still has the toned muscular arms and broad shoulders of a man who works the land, even though Haymitch is sure that Chaff hasn't had to touch a plow since he came home a victor. Siting next to him on stage, Haymitch finds himself staring at the strength of Chaff's body, feeling underfed and inadequate every time he does, despite six months of more than enough food to eat from the Capitol.
For almost an hour, he and Chaff are forced to make small talk with a pink-haired journalist whose name he will forget the minute he walks off over lots of jump cuts and dramatic soundtracks - highlights of the most memorable moments of each of their Games. She compares and contrasts their fighting techniques and strategies while a sullen audience stands by watching.
It's clear that the journalist is only thinking about how far this interview is getting her up the career ladder. She's too busy flashing him and Chaff sympathetic nods and meaningful winks - it's all just fun and games for you two now that your Games are over, eh, boys? - to notice how passively angry the audience is acting. Haymitch tries to warm up to the task before him, remembering Snow's visit, and he tries to include Chaff in his answers, giving him openings to chime in. But Chaff gives him absolutely nothing and focuses on the journalist the entire time, like Haymitch is a piece of rotting meat whose smell he can't stand but must bear.
Chaff's behavior is a bit of a mystery until the journalist plays a clip of one of Haymitch's kills and suddenly it all makes sense - Chaff's cool distance, the angry expressions and pin-drop silences of the audience: Haymitch was personally responsible for killing off this district's male tribute. He had been nameless to Haymitch at the time; he'd kept them all nameless in his head as much as possible, needing them to just be faces attached to statistics so he could murder them.
“It was a clean kill,” the journalist praises Haymitch's form, as if it had nothing to do with killing another human being at all. “I bet he never even knew what hit him.”
Haymitch sits there speechless, more aware than ever before of how callous the Capitol journalists are. He's watched them on television for years, but it's different up here on the dais, when it was his kill. Is she trying to win him points with the audience? Is she following a directive to throw the power of the Games into all their faces? Or maybe she's just trying to somehow score points back home with her bosses.
From then on, his face falls into a permanent scowl, and he focuses his gaze mostly on Chaff's stump of a hand. He spends the rest of the interview imagining how much he'd like to face President Snow in the arena.
The Victory Tour dinner is held, as they usually are, in the Justice Hall's banquet room. Of course, only the elite of District Eleven are invited - Chaff's relatives, the Head Peacekeeper, and various agricultural overseers. It becomes quickly clear from their demeanor and skin color, that everyone in power here, with the exception of Chaff, is not from Eleven.
Also strange is the fact that none of the other victors from Eleven are here. Haymitch knows there are more: he's seen them on television. Usually, almost all a district's victors make an appearance at the Tour festivities, except sometimes in the Career districts, where they have so many victors, they seem to rotate out each year. Haymitch and Chaff sit next to each other at a palatial marble table filled with food, pointedly avoiding looking or talking to each other.
Haymitch is surprised to see that District 11’s mayor is also not from here. He’s pale, mostly bald, and thinner than he would have expected from someone who runs anything important. He shakes Haymitch's hand with a weak grip and makes tedious small talk with him for a while about not much of anything, until Chaff interrupts:
“Mayor Blomfeld, I think your wife is over there looking for you.”
The mayor's eyes have dark lines underneath them, like he hasn't been sleeping well, or is sick. He looks across the room to where Chaff is gesturing and smiles at the tall, athletic woman waving him over. She looks a lot healthier than her husband.
“So she is,” Blomfeld agrees. “Thanks, Chaff. See you later, boys.”
Haymitch watches him go, wondering.
“Is he ...” he begins.
“Cancer,” Chaff answers the question before Haymitch can ask it. His answer is flat, unemotional.
“What kind?” he asks immediately. District Twelve's miners are no strangers to lung cancer.
Chaff shrugs. “Who cares? It’s all over his body now. All those years in the fields as a Peacekeeper, then as an overseer, before he got jumped up all the way to mayor. From the stuff they spray on the fruit to keep the bugs off.”
There is a scowl etched onto his face, weather-beaten from having spent every day of his childhood working the fields. Haymitch takes one last look back at the Mayor, his figure slightly hunched as he talks to his wife. She puts a concerned hand on his shoulder.
“So he’s from District Two?”
Chaff nods.
“Why isn’t someone from Eleven the mayor?” he asks, thinking of Mayor Undersee back home, who inherited the job from her father.
“Why do you think?” Chaff snarls, like he thinks Haymitch is really stupid. Nor does he elaborate.
“That man used to shove his workers, grown men, to the ground simply for not working fast enough,” he remarks after Haymitch says nothing for several seconds. “He liked the whip plenty, too. Honestly, I can’t think of anyone more deserving.”
Haymitch’s eyes widen. Even though Chaff muttered that last part pretty quietly, there are dozens of microphones and cameras here. If any of them picked him up …
His alarmed expression apparently gets Chaff’s attention: he guffaws raucously, acting as if Haymitch just told him a hilarious dirty joke.
“You don't look so clever, Haymitch,” he snorts. “Don't you know by now? They just edit out what they don't want to see or hear.”
Haymitch’s fingers run through his hair in a nervous gesture, and the stiff, glossy and straightened feel of it startles him as soon as he touches it. His prep team tamed the curls right out of him for tonight’s appearance, and the reminder makes him ponder on his team a moment: they certainly seem to just blot out anything they don’t want to hear, don’t they?
His tongue wets his lips. If what Chaff is saying is true, then right now is maybe the best time and place to do this.
“Chaff,” he begins, watching the man whose eyes are now gazing into the crowd, unfocused. But there is no reply.
“Uh,” he tries again, after an awkward moment of silence has passed. His fist clenches under the table in his lap. “I …” he tries, then falters. “Listen, I want you to know … I didn’t … like it.”
Silence.
Chaff’s gaze doesn’t waver, still directed towards the people clustered in corners of the dining hall. At this point, Haymitch isn’t sure if he’d prefer Chaff to meet his eyes or not.
“I didn’t like killing him,” he elaborates, when Chaff still hasn’t said anything. “Your tribute. I didn’t want to. I mean, I did want to live, but I …”
His head turns swiftly towards Haymitch, the muscles in his face tight with anger ready to explode.
“What?” The word comes out in a mixture of horror and accusation as Chaff stares at him. “Did you enjoy it? Seriously, kid. Why would you even bring up an idea like that?”
He only backs off when he sees the pain streak across Haymitch’s face. He closes his eyes, shaking his head, as if exhausted or perhaps frustrated.
“Look, kid, I …” He sighs and looks away again. “To be honest, I really can’t be seen talking to you right now.”
Haymitch swallows hard. Just as he suspected. It’s one thing to be forced to make small talk with Haymitch for hours on camera. It’s an entirely different thing for the district residents to see him on television chitchatting with Haymitch willingly, as if he and Haymitch are friends, as if the death of their children is nothing but play. And here Haymitch is, selfishly demanding absolution from Chaff, like it’s the only thing that matters.
“Yeah,” he grunts finally. “I figured that. I just … it’s just that …” His voice trails off, unable to articulate. “Listen, I just wanted to say I’m sorry. That’s all.”
“Fucking victory tours,” Chaff growls, keeping his eyes away from Haymitch. He propels himself out of his chair, nearly kicking it backward in his haste. “I need a drink.”
And he’s up and gone before Haymitch can react, in long, angry strides towards the bar. He throws himself onto a stool and leans in to catch the bartender’s attention as fast as he can. The bartender cocks his head a moment, seeming to be in doubt as he responds to Chaff, who reacts by jerking back in his seat with a scowl. The bartender looks paralyzed with indecision for a moment, then spins around on his heel and grabs a liquor bottle on a shelf behind him, pouring it into a glass that he hands Chaff with a resigned air. The entire contents are gone in an instant, and Chaff slams down the glass onto the bar, gesturing with his fingers to demand another.
Haymitch exhales unhappily. There’s just no way Chaff is not going to hate Haymitch for a good long time. And of course our consoles are going to be right next to each other, every damn year, he thinks.
“Mister Abernathy?”
A halting baritone sounds behind him, and he wishes he could just refuse to turn around. He doesn’t want to give any more autographs, accept any more congratulations, do any more of this bullshit that he already found humiliating in Twelve. He keeps staring at Chaff, who is now hunched over his glass at the bar, as if to protect it - or perhaps himself - from something.
“Haymitch?” the voice repeats.
When he finally gives in and turns around, he sees two men standing there, as dark-skinned as Chaff and everyone else in this district who isn’t Capitol. One of them even has a similar build to Chaff, and the same kind of rounded face, while the other man is of slimmer, taller build. Both are wearing formal suits, but as he looks closer, he can see how the suits look somehow ill-fitting, despite them having been tailored to their bodies. It’s as if they don’t know quite how to wear them; all the folds and pleats are in just slightly the wrong places.
The one with the round face abruptly thrusts his hand out at Haymitch. “I'm Flax.” His words sound rushed, as if he had to blurt them out to get them out at all. “We wanted to meet you,” he says, his voice clipped. “We wanted to talk to you, about our son.”
Haymitch’s eyes narrow in silent confusion. Their son? Then he notices that the skinny, tall one has his hand resting on one of the round-faced man’s broad, muscular shoulders, and it hits him that they are not brothers, or friends. They are a … couple.
He’s heard of this sort of thing before, occasionally in derisive, muttered remarks about the Capitolites they see on the viewscreens back home during the Games. During the recaps of the Hunger Games festivities going on in the Capitol, which they tend to show during the Games’ lulls as a way to keep things interesting, it’s not uncommon to see two men together, or a woman with a woman at the victory banquets in Snow’s mansion. Sometimes it’s even the case with big celebrities. Everybody back home acts like that sort of relationship is an unnatural Capitol thing, and therefore not to be trusted or talked about really. Certainly, he’s never seen two men in Twelve being together like this. No one would dare.
But these two, he thinks, there’s nothing Capitol about them.
“What do you want?” Lucilla wouldn’t approve of his tone with them, but he’s still a bit too lost in his own thoughts to phrase it more politely, and besides, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, he thinks.
But then just as the man opens his mouth to speak again, the meaning behind the man’s words sink in and a rising panic sets in.
Our son.
Oh, shit.
Their son was the District Eleven male tribute. I killed him.
“We want to tell you about our son,” the man repeats. “His name was Orlando. He was the male tribute this year.”
Haymitch mutters a curse under his breath. So that’s his name. They hadn’t said it once during the interview today.
“I don’t …” he begins, gruff with awkward guilt. “I wish I knew what to say to you.” The only thing he’s tried so far to say about provoked an ugly reaction in Chaff. The thought of causing that kind of anger in a tribute’s grieving parents is too awful to imagine.
Flax’s husband still has his hand on Flax’s shoulder. Haymitch's gaze jerks away at the intimate gesture between the two men, feeling awkward, like he's staring.
“Haymitch, you don’t have to say anything,” the man says. “That wasn’t the point of this. We hold no grudges towards you. We know that if Orlando had gotten the right chance, things could have easily wound up reversed.”
“We just wanted to …” Flax picks up the thread of his partner's words. “...well, I wanted to …” he corrects, but then he doesn’t seem able to finish.
“Flax, we came to this decision together, remember?” the other man corrects with an encouraging air.
“Of course, of course,” Flax hurries to acknowledge, then addresses Haymitch again. “You see, we held a lot of anger for the first few months. At you, at the Games, for taking away Orlando …”
Haymitch is startled by the frank admission into meeting their gazes again for a moment.
“Careful,” he murmurs, hoping his voice is low enough. “There are about a million microphones in this room.” He knows Chaff thinks they just edit out the unacceptable bits, but Snow had killed everyone he loved for something far less direct than this.
Flax purses his lips with distaste. “Haymitch, they took our only son. What can they do to us anymore? Our little boy, whom we’ve had since he was just one day old.” Flax turns to his husband and pulls him close into an embrace seeking comfort. The gesture is so flustering to see between two men that Haymitch's gaze drops again, in confusion and embarrassment.
“Would you please look me in the eye when I’m talking to you about this, young man?” Flax demands. “I know this isn’t your fault; but I think I deserve that much."
Haymitch can feel his own face settling into a default scowl he wishes wasn’t there, but it’s already too late to change that.
“Look, I didn’t know your son,” he says. “I’m sorry, but I never even talked to him. I didn’t talk to anyone besides my district partner. I certainly didn’t want to …”
He realizes he can’t make himself say the words to finish that sentence. He can’t say, I didn’t want to kill him, not to them.
Yet anything else he could say just sounds hollow and false.
“I just wanted to come home,” he finishes, feeling depleted. “That’s all I wanted.”
The words remind him of the conversation with Snow, and he stands there, hands in fists at his sides, hating his life.
Flax nods, a tight smile on his face, eyes shining with tears he’s holding back as he utters a short, sharp noise of emotion.
“Of course you did,” he says, his voice thick. “That’s all Orlando wanted too.”
Before he knows what’s happening, the man catches him in a bone-crunching embrace that makes him freeze with surprise and confusion. He can hear the man’s breaths, heavy with emotion, in his ear. “Thank you, son, for telling me that. You have our forgiveness, all right?” he whispers. “That’s what we came here for. To forgive you.”
Why? he asks inwardly, but he stands there in the embrace, feeling awkward and wholly undeserving.
“Thirteen’s smoking ashes, Flax, what the fuck are you doing here? I told you specifically not to do this.”
Chaff’s angry voice breaks up the moment, his words rapidly advancing towards them as Flax lets Haymitch go.
“This isn’t your decision, Brother,” Flax says firmly. “So you can just stay out of it. This is about me and Melio and our grief, not what you want.”
Chaff swears some more. He’s standing next to Haymitch, a half-filled glass sloshing drops of liquor onto his hand as he gestures at Flax. He never once looks at Haymitch. “I told you to stay away from him.”
“Oh, and because you’re the big bad Victor, now you get to control how your big brother mourns?” Flax's husband Melio jumps in, his eyes having turned into narrow slits that are beading on Chaff. “Do not presume to tell us how to grieve our child,” he orders, words clipped with deadly precision.
Haymitch’s head whirls around to gaze at Chaff, then back at Flax. They are brothers?
“It’s all right, Melio,” Flax reassures him with a calming hand on his arm; but his anger hasn’t diminished either. “He can try to order me around all he wants,” he says with bitter imperiousness. “I’ve already done what I came to do.”
“He was my nephew, you know,” Chaff retorts, his undertone just as bitter. “I’m mourning him too.”
Suddenly, Chaff’s behavior during the interview, his sullenness towards Haymitch, the way his eyes had darted back and forth with restless anger every time they were near each other, makes complete, horrible sense.
No wonder Chaff hasn’t even given him a chance to apologize.
“Oh, sure,” Flax’s sarcasm is spread thick with disdain. “Mourning your way down to the bottom of the next bottle of whisky, are you? Heartfelt. That strategy should bring home the Victors next year, eh?”
Haymitch watches as Chaff stiffens. “Fuck you, Flax. I tried everything I could possibly do to bring that boy home, and you know it.” His voice is low and filled with fury. “Everything I could fucking think of. You’ve got no right to speak to me that way.”
“Fine,” Flax snaps back at him. “You’ve chosen your way to grieve.” He gestures at the drink still in Chaff’s good hand. “So leave us in peace to choose ours. We don’t need you here, trying to manage everything as usual.”
Chaff glares at his brother, then takes another defiant gulp out of his glass. “And I don’t need to listen to this crap,” he says, heading back toward the bar, slamming his glass down. He makes several agitated gestures to the bartender, clearly demanding more alcohol. When he gets it, he hunches back down again over his glass, drinking with a stony face. Haymitch ends up watching him drink all night, unable to say anything to him, unable to shake off the growing unease that he is looking at a vision of his future.
Go to Chapter 5
Author: millari
Characters: Haymitch Abernathy, Mags, Beetee, Chaff, President Snow, Haymitch's Dad, Haymitch's Girl, OCs
Pairing: Haymitch/Beetee
Rating: R
Beta: The highly awesome and beautiful trovia
Warnings: Implied references to forced prostitution, canonical character deaths
Summary: On his victory tour, Haymitch soon finds out that the real Games have only just begun, and survival means learning to spin out a web of lies, compromises and self-destruction. The Games' oldest living victor and arguably its most intelligent one show him that even in the tainted life of a Victor, there are still ways to prevail.
A/N: This is a finished multi-chaptered work that is posting about once per week.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
CHAPTER 4
He's chopping more unnecessary wood one day when a Peacekeeper arrives at his house with a carefully folded letter on stiff, white parchment, bearing a gold-leaf stamp that has the straight, hard angles of the Capitol. The stamp is imprinted with the letters “LB”.
Haymitch swallows hard, knowing already what it says: his Victory Tour begins in a month.
Dear Haymitch,
I can't believe that already five months have gone by and it is almost time for us to meet
again. In less than optimal news, I have as yet to be promoted, but the bright spot I am quite looking forward to seeing you again. I've been busy, busy, busy with preparations for the last two weeks! I special-ordered four new wigs. Of course, a District Twelve posting doesn't pay nearly enough to afford that, but I am good at scrimping when I need to, and well, you don't see a District Twelve victor every day, now do you?
Anyway, I'm writing you now to remind you to get any of your affairs in order, because you'll be gone for at least a month and a half, perhaps two if you are as popular in some of the Districts as I believe you will be; and then of course, there's the finale in the Capitol, where you'll be attending parties and getting some advance information on mentoring. Don't worry about clothes and makeup; your stylist and prep team will be coming too and you know they'll get you back up to Capitol standards in no time.
Say hello to your family for me, and tell your mother I would love to pump her for some more information about you before we leave; I didn't really get a chance on Reaping Day (the Reapings always move so fast), and the more I know about you, the more it can only help with my publicity efforts.
Ta-ta!
Lucilla
That night, he goes back into the Hob, looking for the men he knows will have cards and as much as he hates to admit it to himself, liquor. He brings with him plenty of money; so it doesn't take him long to be sitting at a table in in the back of the marketplace in his pristine wool trench coat with a hand of cards and a shot of home-brewed whisky in front of him. The talk is small and sporadic, as the talk among people who are concentrating on card games for money tends to be, but it includes joking and banter, and it includes him sometimes; it's the closest thing Haymitch has had to innocuous conversation in months.
To his surprise, he leaves the shot glass untouched, but returns the next night to the games, hungry to take risks where the consequences mean little to him. In fact, he finds that the more money he loses at these games, the more teasing and camaraderie is directed his way. He becomes the amusing, clever kid among the inveterate old gamblers who laugh at his sarcasm and his cocky bets. He's the easy mark for the middle-aged hustlers who make book at the Reapings, and then during the rest of the year, glean an
easy buck wherever they can.
Every minute he's there - for three straight weeks - is a minute he's not obsessed with thoughts of the upcoming Victory Tour or memories of the arena. Alsey's face doesn't contort with the pain when he's hoping for exactly the right card. When he's surrounded by the laughter and backslapping of old men, he's not remembering his mother telling him how his father never means to hit them, he's just in pain.
He always stays late into the night, because he never worries about running out of money, and as a bonus, the nightmares decrease some, now that he's stumbling into bed completely exhausted, without liquor even.
The last night before Lucilla is expected to arrive, Haymitch loses all his stakes in a spectacularly long night of ribald jokes, good-natured rivalries and some serious betting wars. Why not, he figures?
Tomorrow he'll be on a train filled with more food than he could eat in a year and all manner of finery will be provided to him free of charge. He walks home in the pitch black of a cloudy night, whistling pleasantly to himself. He stops dead though, at the sight of his house.
He knows he didn't leave the lights on.
He feels around for a substantial rock on the ground, suspecting one of the many criminals he's been socializing with lately. Someone must have figured out by now that it would be easier to relieve him of his money all at once instead of little by little at cards. He finds he's strangely looking forward to a fight. He gets a tiny adrenaline rush and feels for a moment like he's back in the arena.
But when he walks inside and sees the man with the paper-white hair sitting in the most comfortable chair in his living room, the rock falls from his hand and tumbles loudly on the wood floor.
“Mister Abernathy.” President Snow's voice is calm, deliberate and with just a touch of the Capitol accent. It's not like Lucilla's, though. On him, it doesn't sound frivolous at all.
“Won't you have a seat? I'd like to talk.”
When Haymitch can move again, he walks slowly towards the President of Panem, hands in fists at his sides. When he's about three feet away from the chair, he takes the running leap for Snow's throat he's been planning for months in his head. He doesn't even worry anymore about the consequences. What does he have left to live for?
So he feels surprised and confused, and cheated when the very air slams right into his face, and his ears fill with an ever-so-slight hum. There is debilitating pain all over his body. Snow doesn't have a mark on him, though, because Haymitch never even got close enough to touch him.
“Forgive me,” Snow apologizes, as calm and quiet as ever. “I have a weakness for irony.”
Haymitch stands there in bewilderment, gingerly touching his aching nose. While he contemplates the possibility that it's broken, he realizes what has happened: Snow has himself surrounded with a force field, like the one that protected the walls of the arena. Except this one doesn't allow things to enter and bounce back.
This one is like running into a flat, unyielding wall.
“Was the setting too high?” Snow asks, shaking his head, as if full of concern. “Regrettable. But I wouldn't worry. A visible bruise or two is always a good image for a victor. Makes you look like a fighter.”
“You killed my mother and my brother and Alsey!” Haymitch snarls in disbelief at him. He wants to try to smash through that force field, but he knows it will be no use. “And you're talking to me about my image?”
“Do not discount the power of image, Mister Abernathy. It carves attitudes into people far more deeply than any blade, which is precisely why I am here today in fact - to discuss image.”
His words are delivered with an air of tedium, as if he's Haymitch's father - a refined, intelligent version of his father, that is - who's tired and a bit annoyed to be explaining the basics of the world for the umpteenth time.
“Why are you doing this?” Haymitch wants to rail at him, but the words come out more like begging. “I know you killed them all to punish me, why? What did I do that was so terrible?”
Snow raises an eyebrow.
“What? Just because I found out how your damn game worked? Even Cantebury didn't care!”
There is another long silence.
“Artemis Cantebury is a skilled Gamesmaker, one of the most skilled we've had in years,” Snow observes. “The Games arena is where his strengths lie. Luckily, I do not need Artemis in the arena of politics, where he would have perished on Day One.” He cocks his head. “You disappoint me, young man. I must admit. I thought you skilled at seeing the bigger picture.”
The man is as unruffled as he is at the Games, or on television appearances. It's enraging. Haymitch picks up the rock that he dropped earlier, even though they both know it will not do any good, and Snow does not even flinch as Haymitch draws his arm back, roaring, and throws it as hard as he can against the force field anyway.
There is a loud disturbance in the hum, a loud, rippling sound, and the rock sits impotently on the floor in between them.
“Trying to join your family, are you?” Snow taunts, hands coming together in slow motion, fingers pressing themselves into a thoughtful steeple under his chin. “But we both know that you're not really the type for suicide; if you were, you wouldn't have won.”
Haymitch blinks a moment, then sinks into a chair opposite Snow. “I wasn't trying to make you mad, you know. Why would I do that?” He sighs deeply. “All I wanted was to get home.”
“Haymitch,” Snow says softly, again with that infuriating evenness. “We are going to be old friends for many years to come. I would hope that we didn't start out this relationship with lying.”
Haymitch stares at him, bewildered. “What are you talking about? I'm not lying.”
Snow shakes his head. “But you are,” he says, like it wounds him. A surreal part of Haymitch's brain wonders if Snow subjects his monstrous daughter to this kind of flat, emotionless lecturing.
“In the arena, you weren't just trying to get home, Mister Abernathy. You had something else much more rebellious in mind.”
“And what's that?” he snaps.
“You wanted to beat the Games.”
“So? That's how I was going to get home.”
Snow shakes his head, this time, seeming oddly genuine in his desire to explain. “Ordinary players want to beat the other players in the arena. But what you did has implications far beyond the arena, dangerous implications.”
“Then why didn't you just tell me to stop? Why go and kill all these people I care about? I would have done whatever you wanted.”
“You are doing whatever I want,” Snow reminds him.
Haymitch stops short at the truth of that.
Snow holds up an admonishing finger. “This isn't just about you anymore. The seeds of rebellion are sown when the ruling authority is made to look foolish or weak. By using your government’s creation against itself, you have accomplished the former. Because I must keep you alive, you have also managed the latter. But your insidious seeds will not be allowed to bloom. You are going to behave on this tour, and you are not going to draw attention to your clever antics in the arena. No one will ask you about it and you will not offer, is that clear?”
Haymitch slouches in the chair even further.
“Alsey, my Ma, Jackson,” he insists. “They had nothing to do with this. Why take your revenge on them?” His hands grip the arms of the chair he's sitting in until his knuckles turn white with tension. “They were the least rebellious people on the planet!”
Again, Snow's eyes narrow with disappointment. “Revenge?” he says with mild annoyance, as if he is offended by the choice of words, by Haymitch's denseness. “I've already told you, this isn't about you.” He shakes his head back and forth in slow movements. “This is about the fabric of our nation. The sooner you understand that, the smoother this will go.”
He sits back in his chair, looking Haymitch over like a lion considering its prey. “Your loved ones are dead because the people in this district, the other victors, they all need to see the consequences for the kind of thinking you displayed in the Games.”
“And what about in the Capitol?” Haymitch realizes suddenly. “Do they know that you killed the family of this year's victor?”
“Ah, that is a more subtle business,” he concedes. “You will especially not bring that up anywhere outside of District 12, by the way, or there will be more consequences, do you understand? The Capitol will find out in the way I deem most effective.”
Haymitch briefly wonders what that means. “So I keep quiet, or else what?” he challenges.
Instead of answering, Snow takes quiet assessment of him, sending a chill through Haymitch's body that is more unnerving than any verbal threats.
“You need me as mentor next year,” he insists, trying to keep the growing unease out of his voice. “They will notice if I am not there, the victor who saw through the game.”
Eventually, Snow nods, but it doesn't seem nearly enough like a concession for Haymitch's comfort.
“What else can you do to me?” he insists, worried that right now, Snow is right: he isn't able to see the bigger picture. There is a slight tremor in Haymitch's hands and he gives in to the compulsion to fill Snow's deliberate silences. “You've already killed everyone who means anything to me.”
“I am not so sure that that is true.” Snow raises an eyebrow. “You still have a father.”
At that, Haymitch laughs long and hard, more than is natural, in order to cover his sense of relief. “Go ahead,” he taunts. “He's a drunk who liked to hit me and my mother and who knows when he would have started in on my little brother too if you hadn't killed him. Notice how my father's not living here with me? There's plenty of reason for that.” When Snow doesn't respond, Haymitch adds self-consciously, “Seriously, you'd be doing me a favor.”
For the first time since Haymitch has ever met the President, the smile that blooms on Snow's face reaches all the way to his eyes. He seems genuinely pleased at something, like he's just gotten exactly what he wants for his birthday.
“I will keep that in mind, Mister Abernathy.”
The buzzing hum all around Snow flashes off and a couple of Peacekeepers materialize to escort him out.
“Oh, and by the way,” Snow says in parting. “Stop trying to play havoc with the local economy here. You won't be doing them any good in the long run, trust me.
He rises out of his chair with a formal dignity. “And watch the gambling,” he adds. “There's nothing more pathetic than a penniless victor.”
It shouldn't, given all the surveillance he lives under every day. But it amazes Haymitch to imagine President Snow sitting in his office with a viewscreen watching Haymitch buy food and play cards. “You seriously need to find better hobbies,” he snarls at him before he thinks better of it.
Snow chuckles with an air of indulgence, but his words come at Haymitch like the lash of a whip. “And so do you. I don't think you want any more blood on your hands, do you?”
Haymitch swallows hard.
“It's all your choice,” says Snow as he walks out the door. “It always has been.”
**
The next day, still shaken and feeling a mild sense of dread, Haymitch meets Lucilla's train.
The afternoon sun is an orange ball already starting to disappear under the horizon when the gleaming silver high-speed Capitol vehicle glides almost noiselessly to a stop in shabby District Twelve, and the only occupants are the woman herself - who arrives in a flurry of excitement, babbling, and an ever-changing parade of clothes and wigs - and the District Twelve prep team, who respond to him in a sort of chaotic unison with loud, dismayed cries of chagrin.
“Oh, for the love of the Capitol, Haymitch!” shrieks Lenta, his head stylist, in a tone so piercing, it turns the heads of the few Twelve residents running the station for this occasion. “How on earth did you even grow your hair out that long in six months?”
Haymitch just stops himself from cringing visibly with embarrassment. Lenta doesn't seem to notice as she reaches out and pulls at his hair, her fingers probing the texture of it like a buyer in the Hob checking a vegetable for rot.
“All that work,” sighs Preen next to her, a candy-colored wisp of a young woman only a few years older than Haymitch. “All for nothing.”
“Oh, nonsense.” Lucilla pats Lenta's shoulder reassuringly. “You worked miracles on him six months ago, you can do it again, right? I’m sure those wild curls of his are already shuddering at the sight of you, love.” But for the first time since his prep team styled him last year for his Games, Haymitch notices Lucillla gazing at his appearance again with a very Capitolesque look of snobbish distaste.
“Besides ...” Her pitch shoots up two octaves, and she devolves into childish singsong tones: “...we brought wardrobe!” She gestures towards the train. “We've converted a whole car into your dressing room, Haymitch. That's how much there is. You'll have plenty to choose from on each stop.”
He can't help gaping at her, then at the car. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the people in the station pretending not to watch them, as their expressions narrow into disdain.
“There's a car waiting,” he says quickly. “It'll take us to the Justice Hall.”
**
The first stop on his Victory Tour is District Eleven, where he is thrust upon a stage with Chaff - a dark-skinned, dark-haired victor from five years before. Haymitch notices that he still has the toned muscular arms and broad shoulders of a man who works the land, even though Haymitch is sure that Chaff hasn't had to touch a plow since he came home a victor. Siting next to him on stage, Haymitch finds himself staring at the strength of Chaff's body, feeling underfed and inadequate every time he does, despite six months of more than enough food to eat from the Capitol.
For almost an hour, he and Chaff are forced to make small talk with a pink-haired journalist whose name he will forget the minute he walks off over lots of jump cuts and dramatic soundtracks - highlights of the most memorable moments of each of their Games. She compares and contrasts their fighting techniques and strategies while a sullen audience stands by watching.
It's clear that the journalist is only thinking about how far this interview is getting her up the career ladder. She's too busy flashing him and Chaff sympathetic nods and meaningful winks - it's all just fun and games for you two now that your Games are over, eh, boys? - to notice how passively angry the audience is acting. Haymitch tries to warm up to the task before him, remembering Snow's visit, and he tries to include Chaff in his answers, giving him openings to chime in. But Chaff gives him absolutely nothing and focuses on the journalist the entire time, like Haymitch is a piece of rotting meat whose smell he can't stand but must bear.
Chaff's behavior is a bit of a mystery until the journalist plays a clip of one of Haymitch's kills and suddenly it all makes sense - Chaff's cool distance, the angry expressions and pin-drop silences of the audience: Haymitch was personally responsible for killing off this district's male tribute. He had been nameless to Haymitch at the time; he'd kept them all nameless in his head as much as possible, needing them to just be faces attached to statistics so he could murder them.
“It was a clean kill,” the journalist praises Haymitch's form, as if it had nothing to do with killing another human being at all. “I bet he never even knew what hit him.”
Haymitch sits there speechless, more aware than ever before of how callous the Capitol journalists are. He's watched them on television for years, but it's different up here on the dais, when it was his kill. Is she trying to win him points with the audience? Is she following a directive to throw the power of the Games into all their faces? Or maybe she's just trying to somehow score points back home with her bosses.
From then on, his face falls into a permanent scowl, and he focuses his gaze mostly on Chaff's stump of a hand. He spends the rest of the interview imagining how much he'd like to face President Snow in the arena.
The Victory Tour dinner is held, as they usually are, in the Justice Hall's banquet room. Of course, only the elite of District Eleven are invited - Chaff's relatives, the Head Peacekeeper, and various agricultural overseers. It becomes quickly clear from their demeanor and skin color, that everyone in power here, with the exception of Chaff, is not from Eleven.
Also strange is the fact that none of the other victors from Eleven are here. Haymitch knows there are more: he's seen them on television. Usually, almost all a district's victors make an appearance at the Tour festivities, except sometimes in the Career districts, where they have so many victors, they seem to rotate out each year. Haymitch and Chaff sit next to each other at a palatial marble table filled with food, pointedly avoiding looking or talking to each other.
Haymitch is surprised to see that District 11’s mayor is also not from here. He’s pale, mostly bald, and thinner than he would have expected from someone who runs anything important. He shakes Haymitch's hand with a weak grip and makes tedious small talk with him for a while about not much of anything, until Chaff interrupts:
“Mayor Blomfeld, I think your wife is over there looking for you.”
The mayor's eyes have dark lines underneath them, like he hasn't been sleeping well, or is sick. He looks across the room to where Chaff is gesturing and smiles at the tall, athletic woman waving him over. She looks a lot healthier than her husband.
“So she is,” Blomfeld agrees. “Thanks, Chaff. See you later, boys.”
Haymitch watches him go, wondering.
“Is he ...” he begins.
“Cancer,” Chaff answers the question before Haymitch can ask it. His answer is flat, unemotional.
“What kind?” he asks immediately. District Twelve's miners are no strangers to lung cancer.
Chaff shrugs. “Who cares? It’s all over his body now. All those years in the fields as a Peacekeeper, then as an overseer, before he got jumped up all the way to mayor. From the stuff they spray on the fruit to keep the bugs off.”
There is a scowl etched onto his face, weather-beaten from having spent every day of his childhood working the fields. Haymitch takes one last look back at the Mayor, his figure slightly hunched as he talks to his wife. She puts a concerned hand on his shoulder.
“So he’s from District Two?”
Chaff nods.
“Why isn’t someone from Eleven the mayor?” he asks, thinking of Mayor Undersee back home, who inherited the job from her father.
“Why do you think?” Chaff snarls, like he thinks Haymitch is really stupid. Nor does he elaborate.
“That man used to shove his workers, grown men, to the ground simply for not working fast enough,” he remarks after Haymitch says nothing for several seconds. “He liked the whip plenty, too. Honestly, I can’t think of anyone more deserving.”
Haymitch’s eyes widen. Even though Chaff muttered that last part pretty quietly, there are dozens of microphones and cameras here. If any of them picked him up …
His alarmed expression apparently gets Chaff’s attention: he guffaws raucously, acting as if Haymitch just told him a hilarious dirty joke.
“You don't look so clever, Haymitch,” he snorts. “Don't you know by now? They just edit out what they don't want to see or hear.”
Haymitch’s fingers run through his hair in a nervous gesture, and the stiff, glossy and straightened feel of it startles him as soon as he touches it. His prep team tamed the curls right out of him for tonight’s appearance, and the reminder makes him ponder on his team a moment: they certainly seem to just blot out anything they don’t want to hear, don’t they?
His tongue wets his lips. If what Chaff is saying is true, then right now is maybe the best time and place to do this.
“Chaff,” he begins, watching the man whose eyes are now gazing into the crowd, unfocused. But there is no reply.
“Uh,” he tries again, after an awkward moment of silence has passed. His fist clenches under the table in his lap. “I …” he tries, then falters. “Listen, I want you to know … I didn’t … like it.”
Silence.
Chaff’s gaze doesn’t waver, still directed towards the people clustered in corners of the dining hall. At this point, Haymitch isn’t sure if he’d prefer Chaff to meet his eyes or not.
“I didn’t like killing him,” he elaborates, when Chaff still hasn’t said anything. “Your tribute. I didn’t want to. I mean, I did want to live, but I …”
His head turns swiftly towards Haymitch, the muscles in his face tight with anger ready to explode.
“What?” The word comes out in a mixture of horror and accusation as Chaff stares at him. “Did you enjoy it? Seriously, kid. Why would you even bring up an idea like that?”
He only backs off when he sees the pain streak across Haymitch’s face. He closes his eyes, shaking his head, as if exhausted or perhaps frustrated.
“Look, kid, I …” He sighs and looks away again. “To be honest, I really can’t be seen talking to you right now.”
Haymitch swallows hard. Just as he suspected. It’s one thing to be forced to make small talk with Haymitch for hours on camera. It’s an entirely different thing for the district residents to see him on television chitchatting with Haymitch willingly, as if he and Haymitch are friends, as if the death of their children is nothing but play. And here Haymitch is, selfishly demanding absolution from Chaff, like it’s the only thing that matters.
“Yeah,” he grunts finally. “I figured that. I just … it’s just that …” His voice trails off, unable to articulate. “Listen, I just wanted to say I’m sorry. That’s all.”
“Fucking victory tours,” Chaff growls, keeping his eyes away from Haymitch. He propels himself out of his chair, nearly kicking it backward in his haste. “I need a drink.”
And he’s up and gone before Haymitch can react, in long, angry strides towards the bar. He throws himself onto a stool and leans in to catch the bartender’s attention as fast as he can. The bartender cocks his head a moment, seeming to be in doubt as he responds to Chaff, who reacts by jerking back in his seat with a scowl. The bartender looks paralyzed with indecision for a moment, then spins around on his heel and grabs a liquor bottle on a shelf behind him, pouring it into a glass that he hands Chaff with a resigned air. The entire contents are gone in an instant, and Chaff slams down the glass onto the bar, gesturing with his fingers to demand another.
Haymitch exhales unhappily. There’s just no way Chaff is not going to hate Haymitch for a good long time. And of course our consoles are going to be right next to each other, every damn year, he thinks.
“Mister Abernathy?”
A halting baritone sounds behind him, and he wishes he could just refuse to turn around. He doesn’t want to give any more autographs, accept any more congratulations, do any more of this bullshit that he already found humiliating in Twelve. He keeps staring at Chaff, who is now hunched over his glass at the bar, as if to protect it - or perhaps himself - from something.
“Haymitch?” the voice repeats.
When he finally gives in and turns around, he sees two men standing there, as dark-skinned as Chaff and everyone else in this district who isn’t Capitol. One of them even has a similar build to Chaff, and the same kind of rounded face, while the other man is of slimmer, taller build. Both are wearing formal suits, but as he looks closer, he can see how the suits look somehow ill-fitting, despite them having been tailored to their bodies. It’s as if they don’t know quite how to wear them; all the folds and pleats are in just slightly the wrong places.
The one with the round face abruptly thrusts his hand out at Haymitch. “I'm Flax.” His words sound rushed, as if he had to blurt them out to get them out at all. “We wanted to meet you,” he says, his voice clipped. “We wanted to talk to you, about our son.”
Haymitch’s eyes narrow in silent confusion. Their son? Then he notices that the skinny, tall one has his hand resting on one of the round-faced man’s broad, muscular shoulders, and it hits him that they are not brothers, or friends. They are a … couple.
He’s heard of this sort of thing before, occasionally in derisive, muttered remarks about the Capitolites they see on the viewscreens back home during the Games. During the recaps of the Hunger Games festivities going on in the Capitol, which they tend to show during the Games’ lulls as a way to keep things interesting, it’s not uncommon to see two men together, or a woman with a woman at the victory banquets in Snow’s mansion. Sometimes it’s even the case with big celebrities. Everybody back home acts like that sort of relationship is an unnatural Capitol thing, and therefore not to be trusted or talked about really. Certainly, he’s never seen two men in Twelve being together like this. No one would dare.
But these two, he thinks, there’s nothing Capitol about them.
“What do you want?” Lucilla wouldn’t approve of his tone with them, but he’s still a bit too lost in his own thoughts to phrase it more politely, and besides, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, he thinks.
But then just as the man opens his mouth to speak again, the meaning behind the man’s words sink in and a rising panic sets in.
Our son.
Oh, shit.
Their son was the District Eleven male tribute. I killed him.
“We want to tell you about our son,” the man repeats. “His name was Orlando. He was the male tribute this year.”
Haymitch mutters a curse under his breath. So that’s his name. They hadn’t said it once during the interview today.
“I don’t …” he begins, gruff with awkward guilt. “I wish I knew what to say to you.” The only thing he’s tried so far to say about provoked an ugly reaction in Chaff. The thought of causing that kind of anger in a tribute’s grieving parents is too awful to imagine.
Flax’s husband still has his hand on Flax’s shoulder. Haymitch's gaze jerks away at the intimate gesture between the two men, feeling awkward, like he's staring.
“Haymitch, you don’t have to say anything,” the man says. “That wasn’t the point of this. We hold no grudges towards you. We know that if Orlando had gotten the right chance, things could have easily wound up reversed.”
“We just wanted to …” Flax picks up the thread of his partner's words. “...well, I wanted to …” he corrects, but then he doesn’t seem able to finish.
“Flax, we came to this decision together, remember?” the other man corrects with an encouraging air.
“Of course, of course,” Flax hurries to acknowledge, then addresses Haymitch again. “You see, we held a lot of anger for the first few months. At you, at the Games, for taking away Orlando …”
Haymitch is startled by the frank admission into meeting their gazes again for a moment.
“Careful,” he murmurs, hoping his voice is low enough. “There are about a million microphones in this room.” He knows Chaff thinks they just edit out the unacceptable bits, but Snow had killed everyone he loved for something far less direct than this.
Flax purses his lips with distaste. “Haymitch, they took our only son. What can they do to us anymore? Our little boy, whom we’ve had since he was just one day old.” Flax turns to his husband and pulls him close into an embrace seeking comfort. The gesture is so flustering to see between two men that Haymitch's gaze drops again, in confusion and embarrassment.
“Would you please look me in the eye when I’m talking to you about this, young man?” Flax demands. “I know this isn’t your fault; but I think I deserve that much."
Haymitch can feel his own face settling into a default scowl he wishes wasn’t there, but it’s already too late to change that.
“Look, I didn’t know your son,” he says. “I’m sorry, but I never even talked to him. I didn’t talk to anyone besides my district partner. I certainly didn’t want to …”
He realizes he can’t make himself say the words to finish that sentence. He can’t say, I didn’t want to kill him, not to them.
Yet anything else he could say just sounds hollow and false.
“I just wanted to come home,” he finishes, feeling depleted. “That’s all I wanted.”
The words remind him of the conversation with Snow, and he stands there, hands in fists at his sides, hating his life.
Flax nods, a tight smile on his face, eyes shining with tears he’s holding back as he utters a short, sharp noise of emotion.
“Of course you did,” he says, his voice thick. “That’s all Orlando wanted too.”
Before he knows what’s happening, the man catches him in a bone-crunching embrace that makes him freeze with surprise and confusion. He can hear the man’s breaths, heavy with emotion, in his ear. “Thank you, son, for telling me that. You have our forgiveness, all right?” he whispers. “That’s what we came here for. To forgive you.”
Why? he asks inwardly, but he stands there in the embrace, feeling awkward and wholly undeserving.
“Thirteen’s smoking ashes, Flax, what the fuck are you doing here? I told you specifically not to do this.”
Chaff’s angry voice breaks up the moment, his words rapidly advancing towards them as Flax lets Haymitch go.
“This isn’t your decision, Brother,” Flax says firmly. “So you can just stay out of it. This is about me and Melio and our grief, not what you want.”
Chaff swears some more. He’s standing next to Haymitch, a half-filled glass sloshing drops of liquor onto his hand as he gestures at Flax. He never once looks at Haymitch. “I told you to stay away from him.”
“Oh, and because you’re the big bad Victor, now you get to control how your big brother mourns?” Flax's husband Melio jumps in, his eyes having turned into narrow slits that are beading on Chaff. “Do not presume to tell us how to grieve our child,” he orders, words clipped with deadly precision.
Haymitch’s head whirls around to gaze at Chaff, then back at Flax. They are brothers?
“It’s all right, Melio,” Flax reassures him with a calming hand on his arm; but his anger hasn’t diminished either. “He can try to order me around all he wants,” he says with bitter imperiousness. “I’ve already done what I came to do.”
“He was my nephew, you know,” Chaff retorts, his undertone just as bitter. “I’m mourning him too.”
Suddenly, Chaff’s behavior during the interview, his sullenness towards Haymitch, the way his eyes had darted back and forth with restless anger every time they were near each other, makes complete, horrible sense.
No wonder Chaff hasn’t even given him a chance to apologize.
“Oh, sure,” Flax’s sarcasm is spread thick with disdain. “Mourning your way down to the bottom of the next bottle of whisky, are you? Heartfelt. That strategy should bring home the Victors next year, eh?”
Haymitch watches as Chaff stiffens. “Fuck you, Flax. I tried everything I could possibly do to bring that boy home, and you know it.” His voice is low and filled with fury. “Everything I could fucking think of. You’ve got no right to speak to me that way.”
“Fine,” Flax snaps back at him. “You’ve chosen your way to grieve.” He gestures at the drink still in Chaff’s good hand. “So leave us in peace to choose ours. We don’t need you here, trying to manage everything as usual.”
Chaff glares at his brother, then takes another defiant gulp out of his glass. “And I don’t need to listen to this crap,” he says, heading back toward the bar, slamming his glass down. He makes several agitated gestures to the bartender, clearly demanding more alcohol. When he gets it, he hunches back down again over his glass, drinking with a stony face. Haymitch ends up watching him drink all night, unable to say anything to him, unable to shake off the growing unease that he is looking at a vision of his future.
Go to Chapter 5