Fic: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil (5/11)
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 most encouraging 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 I will post about once per week.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
CHAPTER 5:
During the train ride to District Ten, he attempts a mental tally of the people he personally killed in combat and which district they came from, trying to get an idea of what kind of hell to expect on the rest of this trip. The deaths are all too memorable, but the names and districts are not. This disturbs him, makes him feel too Capitol.
But it also makes him think of Lucilla, and then an idea.
He asks her if she has a list of the tributes for whose deaths he was credited. He knows she would also have actual footage of the kills, but he doesn't need more fodder for his mind to play with. She complies, making pleased noises about him showing some enthusiasm for once. The carefully-typewritten list fastidiously tells him the name of each tribute he killed, the district, and gruesomely, the weapon used to kill them, as well as their manner of death: Seamus Walsh, District Four, hunting knife, exsanguination. Orlando Miller, District Eleven, rock, cranial trauma..
It's an overnight train ride. Despite the smooth, silent journey, he sleeps fitfully. His attempts at reckoning have brought back the nightmares with a vengeance, and he wakes repeatedly with choked-off gasps, from images he finally remembers of all the other tributes he killed or saw killed in the arena. He first wakes up from a nightmare of the arrow tearing through the neck of the girl from District Eight, whose name he finally remembers in a flash was Marina. He wakes up a second time, clutching his familiar knife under his pillow, to the fading image of yanking a different knife out of Seamus Walsh, a knife that now sits in the Games Museum in the Capitol.
More than once, he considers getting up and going to the dining car where he knows the sideboard will be stocked with more liquors than he can name, but after one of the dreams features his father attacking his mother with a knife Haymitch recognizes as the one he used in the arena, he is more resolute than ever not to succumb.
But after the third nightmare in a row, he refuses to go back to sleep, and just lies there in the darkness with a residual feeling of terror at nothing in particular, feeling his heartbeat, loud and pounding in his ears. It competes with the hum of the high-speed train gliding along its tracks, and he wonders how the hell he's going to make through ten more of these things.
With each city, he stays quieter and quieter, giving as little as he can, saying next to nothing if he's in a District where he's killed a tribute. As they get through each round of interviews in each district - Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, he notices the journalists getting younger or sometimes older, but in each case, quite obviously less prestigious, to the point where Lucilla corners him in his room in the District Six Justice Hall after his interview, wagging her gold-painted fingernails at him in frustration.
“I don't know what you think you're accomplishing with this gloom and doom act,” she complains. “I actually got a call about you this evening from the focus groups team!”
“Oh?” Haymitch barely raises one eyebrow, to show how little he could care about what the Capitol citizenry has to say on the matter. His mood isn't being helped by all the nightmares he keeps having.
“Yes, I did!” Lucilla insists on her angry righteousness. “They are concerned that you're not being outgoing enough. The focus groups are saying you don’t engage enough with the journalists, that you frown too much. People in the Capitol are actually tuning out; that almost never happens with the Victory Tour specials. They are practically guaranteed ratings killers!”
When he merely scowls at her, she adjusts her purple wig obsessively, even though every inch of her is a perfectly groomed portrait of Capitol fashion. “Whatever happened to the cocky young man I saw with Caesar Flickerman?” she tries in despair. “He at least had a roguish charm.”
“I guess he grew up and killed some children,” he growls at her.
“It's a game!” she retorts. “That's how the game works! And look at you! Repaid for your great risk and clever cunning with unending glory in the annals of the Capitol, and money to last a lifetime! Surely you see how much better off your life is since the Hunger Games.”
Haymitch is surprised into a good long stare of disbelief. “You don't think of us as real people at all, do you?” he shouts.
It surprises him even more when she is left bereft by his unfiltered remark. “How dare you say such a thing to me, Haymitch Abernathy? Of course you're real people, with lives and stories and families back home! You think we forget that? Why do you think we make a point of interviewing each tribute with Caesar before the Games? Why have an escort to do your publicity? It's so no matter what happens in the arena, the stories of all you brave young men and women, who sacrifice their lives for the good of Panem, will not be lost.”
With those self-righteous and hideously clueless words ringing in his ears, Haymitch turns and punches a hole in the wall beside them, no mean feat considering the building is over eight hundred years old and made of plaster. She visibly flinches, in a terribly familiar way, and for a moment, his heart races in a familiar way too, like he's back home in Twelve, trapped in one of those moments where he can see his dad about to explode with anger and there's nothing he can do to stop it.
His fists open, and he self-consciously puts his hands back down at his sides, making sure she sees it, even as he feels his heart pounding like crazy.
“I'll see you in the morning, Lucilla,” he mutters, but he can't look her in the eye anymore.
She takes the hint and leaves. “Early day tomorrow,” she says, her voice shaken and muted as she reaches the door. “Breakfast at 7 a.m. Be on time, for once.”
He nods as he hears her leave, and finds his eyes focusing on the sideboard in his room which contains an assortment of expensive bottles of liquor. He strides over as soon as she's gone and picks up one of the heavier bottles, considering the label a moment - Capitol Cognac - before he smashes it with a furious satisfaction against the wall. He grabs another bottle and another and smashes them all, letting the rage overtake him, enjoying the sound of smashing glass and the sight of the brown and amber liquids streaming wastefully down the wall. The stains on the antique floral wallpaper run in chaotic lines that he knows will never scrub away, and he finds that utterly pleasing, until an Avox shows up out of nowhere at the sound of breaking glass, his expression frantic as he flees to the adjoining bathroom and emerges with a towel to mop up the mess. Haymitch can hear the Avox's shoes crunching atop the shards of broken glass as he starts his work.
“No, no!” he exclaims, horrified at the submissive terror his actions have inspired in this man who is easily twice his age. “Please don't do that. I'll take care of it. It's my mess, I'll clean it up.”
The Avox's eyes widen with … surprise? Fear? Confusion? Then he waves at Haymitch with the towel and shakes his head before returning to his task.
“Leave it, I said!” he roars, and instantly regrets it as the Avox literally jumps backward a step, and turns quickly around, as if getting a predator in his sights. Haymitch feels shame wash over him as he wonders what the Avox did to be punished like this. Did he try to run away from his district? Did he just fuck something important up, or is he what Snow meant when he talked about the seeds of rebellion? Did this guy stand up to the Capitol, not symbolically like Haymitch, but in a real way?
Raising his hands up at the man in a placating gesture, Haymitch struggles to make his voice even, soft, generous and unthreatening. Basically the opposite of everything about Randall Abernathy's voice. “I 'm sorry,” he breathes. “I shouldn't have. You'll get in trouble if I make you leave it, won't you?”
The Avox nods with a worried expression, then quickly looks back at the stained wall, now that Haymitch has made it clear he's not a threat.
“Can I at least help you?” he asks.
The Avox shakes his head emphatically, and waves at Haymitch again, clearly dismissing him. For a moment, Haymitch considers getting the hell out of there, running away from the shame of it, but then he frowns, falling onto the bed with a loud thump, making himself watch the Avox work.
He lets the sound of crunching glass fill his ears and inhales deeply the aroma of spilt alcohol hanging in the air, punishing himself with it.
The Avox will probably never appreciate his intentions, but Haymitch does it anyway; he figures it's the least he can do.
**
District Five has no current living victor, and at first, Haymitch thinks that he will at least get some relief from having to stare across the stage at someone who resents him for surviving. And at least in this district, he didn't kill anyone.
But as it turns out, the media onslaught is actually worse to face alone, with no one else to relieve him even for a minute from entertaining the Capitol. At least in the other districts, the journalists assigned to his interviews had started figuring out what Haymitch was going to be like, and had planned accordingly: They had taken to asking him a few standard questions, showing a few of his impressive moments on screen - the force field moment excluded, of course - then quickly moving on to a program that's been adjusted to be less of the “tell us what was it like” variety and more about analysis of this year's games, an approach where any previous victor in attendance can easily find threads to pick up and discuss, leaving Haymitch to sit scowling in his chair.
But this is not the case in District Five, where the spotlight is all Haymitch's.
Marcus Keppeler, a famous but middle-aged has-been talk show host in the Capitol, has been brought in to deal with him today, and it's clear that Haymitch's reputation has preceded him and Keppeler is not pleased. Before the cameras start rolling, Keppeler glares at his prey from the tall-backed leather chair that looks out of place in the poverty of this district, even in front of the grand Justice Hall. His only words to Haymitch before they go live come out terse and impatient: “By the way, President Snow is watching tonight.”
Haymitch swears his heart stops. Can Keppeler really know what is at stake here? Would Snow tell the man something like that?
No, it can't be. Keppler just knows the importance of performing well when the President is watching; that's all, right?
Yet the threat cows him enough that he actually does try to make an effort. But he's so rattled now, the interview is just a slow disaster. He tries to banter, but his timing is off. Despite the words he wielded like a weapon before the cameras came on, Keppeler clearly wasn't expecting any big change out of Haymitch, and so he misses at first that Haymitch is making jokes and then tries to cover the awkwardness that ensues with improvised changes of subject that get them nowhere conversationally. Finally, in desperation, the host tries one last area he clearly hopes will be harmless and garner some audience interest.
“So Haymitch,” he begins. “You must be getting a lot of attention from the ladies in your district now that you're a celebrity.”
Haymitch squints at him in surprise at this tack, but Keppler sends him a look implicitly telling him to roll with it. “You may not know this, but we ran a poll especially for this program where we asked fans to name their favorite tribute from the last ten years, alive or dead. You came in number three on that list, did you know that?”
Haymitch shakes his head, knowing he should pull out his cocky persona from the Games, but he's having trouble producing it. The question is so ridiculous and he doesn't understand where it is going.
“Is your escort forwarding you all the fan mail you're getting in the Capitol?” Keppeler asks. “From what we hear, you've got plenty of admirers of both genders, including President Snow's daughter.”
The audience oohs and aahs at that revelation with just a touch of scandalized appreciation, but Haymitch is distracted, the reference to both genders reminding him of Flax and Melio in Eleven. A memory of Melio's fingers crawling affectionately across Flax's shoulders, in a way that his father never would have done with his mother makes Haymitch tense up almost impercetibly, and blinds him temporarily to the larger-than-life image being flashed onto the screen behind Keppeler.
It's Alsey. She's smiling. She babbling excitedly about him on the television. For a bewildering millisecond, Haymitch's brain thinks this means that she is alive, and he gapes at the garish, deafening, fifty-foot sight of her. What the fuck is going on?
The soft strings playing underneath her words are the cue that finally let him understand what this is. Of course. He's never seen this footage, but it must have been filmed during Training Week, when they make profiles of all the tributes, the Capitol's way of generating interest in more tributes than just the Careers. Otherwise, no one would sponsor any tributes except the Ones, Twos and Fours, and Capitol forbid that the Games ever become boring.
“Now what does your pretty Miss Alsey think of all this attention you're getting?” Keppeler leans in with a confidential smile. “You can tell us: is she jealous?”
Haymitch is suddenly sure that all his nerve endings are on fire. Is this question a coincidence, or did Snow put Keppeler up to it? How the fuck is he going to answer? He suddenly thinks of Alsey's parents watching, and the idea of having to lie about her in public leaves him gutted and speechless.
The dead air prompts Keppeler to turn to the audience with that same confidential smile, as if Haymitch isn't there. “Ah, I see,” he says with an insinuating air. “He doesn't want to get into trouble with his best girl, methinks.” He turns back to Haymitch with a pleased light in his eye, thrilled to have found a topic with some traction.
“Well, come now, Clever Haymitch,” he banters. “That was your nickname in the Games, wasn't it?”
After a moment, the audience's murmurs of approval confirm this fact and he gives them a broad smile and a wink before turning back to his prey. “You were clever enough to win the Games six months ago; surely you can talk your way out of this one.”
The audience laughs, and Keppeler eats it up. For the first time in ages, he's got the audience in the palm of his hand, and he's unwilling to let go.
Haymitch stares straight ahead, unseeing, eyes filled with the image of President Snow in his mansion, watching a viewscreen. “She isn't with me anymore,” he says in a monotone. He can't look at Keppeler's face; he can't, or he knows he'll lose it.
The audience groans in sympathy. They can tell from Haymitch's stiff demeanor that this parting was against his will. Keppeler joins in with them melodramatically. “Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that,” he says.
“Are you up to telling us what happened?”
Haymitch still can't meet anyone's eye. What the fuck is he supposed to say? Is Snow going to punish him for this? Fuck.
He can hear his own voice cracking with emotion, and he hates everyone and everything in the world right now.
“She, um … she ... died.” His hands are shaking on his lap. Shit, shit, shit. Why did he just say that? Snow told him to keep it quiet. What has he just gone and done?
Another gasp from the audience. “Uh … it was a few months ago,” he adds, dropping the pitch of his words in a drastic way that he hopes communicates to Keppeler to please stop this line of questioning. But Keppeler senses ratings gold, and goes in for the kill.
“Oh, Haymitch,” he says in his best sympathetic voice. “That is a tragedy. Alsey seemed like such a nice girl when we interviewed her. She got very high ratings with our audiences. If it's any comfort, it was obvious to everyone how much she loved you, and how much you loved her.”
Of course it's not any fucking comfort at all. But it's not like he can say that. “Could we please stop talking about this, Marcus?” he begs instead, hating being on display like this, terrified of the question that will surely come next, knowing he will have to manufacture a convincing lie or else endanger more lives. “It's a very emotional topic for me,” he tries.
Marcus reaches in and pats Haymitch on the arm. “Of course it is. But you can see how this is shocking news to all of us who followed your story. There are going to be some very heartbroken viewers in the Capitol tonight, I can assure you of that.” He pauses. “Do you think you could just explain to us briefly how Alsey died? Everyone, I'm sure, wants to know.”
Haymitch covers his eyes with his palms to hide the sudden fury. Snow already has taken his family, taken Alsey, and now he's probably already sitting in his office watching, plotting how to punish Haymitch for what he just said. The last thing Haymitch needs is to provoke him more. But Haymitch won't let Snow take the truth too, at least not like this. He can't make up some stupid lie about what happened to her. He just can't.
He hunches in the fancy chair for what must be a full minute, wondering how to get out of this, while everyone around him sits waiting in polite, rapt silence. Even the District Five audience has been shocked out of its passive resentment and is hanging on tenterhooks to find out what's coming.
“Please don't ask me to talk about it, Marcus,” he repeats lamely. “I can't. I just can't.” He tries to pretend to be on the verge of tears, but actually right now, he wants to punch something, wants to take a hammer to Marcus Keppeler's ridiculous hair-sprayed green wig, preferably with Keppeler still underneath it.
“All right, all right, Haymitch.” Keppeler finally has no choice to back off or look cruel. “I understand. It's obvious this is quite painful for you.”
Haymitch can tell that he's secretly annoyed, but he couldn't give a fuck right now. He's just glad Keppeler is ending this nightmare and that in a minute, he can go hide out in his room in the Justice Hall and pray he won't come home to a dead father or a punished district. Despite his words to Snow, he knows the instant he thinks about it that he can't live with any more deaths on his hands. There are a few perfunctory words to wrap up the interview and then Keppeler addresses the camera, urging them to tune in two nights from now, when Haymitch will be in District Four.
The second the red light on the cameras go out, Haymitch is up and leaving the dais without permission, Lucilla's protests from across the stage buzzing like mosquitoes in his ears.
**
He gets to his room first, but within minutes, Lucilla is banging on his door, half-ordering, half-begging him to let her in.
“Go the fuck away!” he yells at the door, but she's surprisingly persistent, and there's something immediate in her voice that despite his better judgment, makes him get up from the luxurious bed littered with useless and uncomfortable throw pillows.
When he opens the door, she's got ugly streaks of mascara running down her cheeks. She's been obviously crying hard, and for a moment he's confused. “What do you want, Lucilla?”
To his surprise, she just hugs him as tight as she can, all her lace and taffeta and buttons pressing into him. “I'm so sorry, Haymitch. I'm sorry about Alsey. I had no idea ... I'm sorry I never got to meet her.”
“Then she means nothing to you,” he snaps at her, not wanting the job of processing her grief for her. “She's just another one of your damn stories in the annals of the Capitol.” He knows he's being cruel, but he's both too exhausted and too angry right now to care. He's also calculating enough to know that this is the precise level of harshness that will cut her deeply, and will probably make her go away.
Except that she doesn't. She grabs his elbow without a word and shuts the door behind her with a high-heeled foot. At first, he thinks she's going to pull him to the table and chair to talk, but instead, she guides him into the luxurious bathroom, turns the sink water tap on full blast, then brings him back into a tight embrace.
“When I arrived in District Twelve for this tour, you told me Alsey didn't want to talk to me and that your mother was too sick to be interviewed,” she whispers into his ear. “You ran interference about your family the entire day and a half we were there, and you completely lied about Alsey, so tell me the truth: what's really happened?”
His eyes widen, and his hands grab hers, not sure why he suddenly trusts her with something this big. “I can't talk to you about it,” he whispers as low as he possibly can.
“I'm not allowed to talk about it. If they hear me ...”
“You know what I think you need after that stressful appearance, Haymitch?” Lucilla says in a much louder voice. “A good, relaxing bath.”
Before he knows it, she's turned off the sink taps and is running the bathtub ones instead, which make even more noise. It's a luxury tub, deep, and with jets of rushing water on all sides. “These kinds of tubs take about twenty minutes or so before they're full,” she says in a low, serious voice Haymitch has not heard before. “In the Capitol, you do this when you want to make sure a conversation will be truly private.”
He's bewildered as she takes his hand and holds it in hers and they sit on the tub's edge side by side.
“So if you want,” she says, “for the next twenty minutes, I'm here, all right?” .
**
In the end, they don't talk much about it, because it's awful to say, and besides, he keeps getting distracted, checking the running water to see how much time they have left. But he tells her about the executions, about President Snow's visit. With the release of finally telling someone the truth about what's going on, he's unable to stop himself from crying a little, but she squeezes his hand, and after a minute, he pulls himself together as she turns off the spigots and the room turns eerily quiet by comparison. “Thanks,” is all he says, aware again of the bugs. Lucilla just nods. By silent agreement, they slide down from the tub's edge together, sitting on the bathroom floor in silence, hands already separated.
He doesn't tell her about the loneliness, or about his father, or the nightmares of the arena, or any of the other things he's struggling with, because he can tell by her expression that she's already gotten way more than she bargained for and she doesn't know how to do much more than listen and put her arm around him for comfort, but she's surprisingly good at that. He startles when her arm first falls across his back, then tenses up, stiff in the half-embrace. But she leaves it there, and eventually, he calms down and lays his head on her shoulder and it feels nice somehow.
He worries a little afterwards that he perhaps shouldn't have told her. Her expression is grim and there is an aura about her now, like she wishes she could unhear things.
“You're not like you were an hour ago,” he says, yawning as she walks him out of the bathroom and straight to the bed, where she tucks him in like a mother. He's too grateful and too exhausted to even object, never mind resist.
“Listen to you,” she softly teases him. “You just don't know how to stop being clever, do you?” He can hear a slight manic edge to her words as she strokes his dark curls over and over, but he's drifting quickly into sleep and has no idea how to address it anyway. “No talking now,” she orders. “Just sleep. You need it. I'll see you in the morning.”
He has a nightmare a couple of hours later about his reaping. Except that instead of he and Maysilee, it's him and Lucilla being reaped. Alsey is there too, but she's dressed in Capitol garb, and he realizes that she is their escort. As Alsey draws the names, Lucilla is crying and begging her to explain why she's been reaped, and Alsey tells her there's no reason; it's just how the world works. Lucilla only cries harder. Haymitch feels like he's got a hole in his heart because somehow he knows that all of this is all his fault and there's no going back now; they're both in the arena whether they like it or not.
He wakes with his heart thumping wildly in the dark, and is surprised to see Lucilla - the real flesh and blood Lucilla - asleep in a chair near his bed. He lies there for a while watching her disheveled figure until the rise and fall of her breathing lulls him back into slumber for the rest of a dreamless night.
Go to Chapter 6
Author: millari
Characters: Haymitch Abernathy, Mags, Beetee, Chaff, President Snow, Haymitch's Dad, Haymitch's Girl, OCs
Pairing: Haymitch/Beetee
Rating: R
Beta: The most encouraging 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 I will post about once per week.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
CHAPTER 5:
During the train ride to District Ten, he attempts a mental tally of the people he personally killed in combat and which district they came from, trying to get an idea of what kind of hell to expect on the rest of this trip. The deaths are all too memorable, but the names and districts are not. This disturbs him, makes him feel too Capitol.
But it also makes him think of Lucilla, and then an idea.
He asks her if she has a list of the tributes for whose deaths he was credited. He knows she would also have actual footage of the kills, but he doesn't need more fodder for his mind to play with. She complies, making pleased noises about him showing some enthusiasm for once. The carefully-typewritten list fastidiously tells him the name of each tribute he killed, the district, and gruesomely, the weapon used to kill them, as well as their manner of death: Seamus Walsh, District Four, hunting knife, exsanguination. Orlando Miller, District Eleven, rock, cranial trauma..
It's an overnight train ride. Despite the smooth, silent journey, he sleeps fitfully. His attempts at reckoning have brought back the nightmares with a vengeance, and he wakes repeatedly with choked-off gasps, from images he finally remembers of all the other tributes he killed or saw killed in the arena. He first wakes up from a nightmare of the arrow tearing through the neck of the girl from District Eight, whose name he finally remembers in a flash was Marina. He wakes up a second time, clutching his familiar knife under his pillow, to the fading image of yanking a different knife out of Seamus Walsh, a knife that now sits in the Games Museum in the Capitol.
More than once, he considers getting up and going to the dining car where he knows the sideboard will be stocked with more liquors than he can name, but after one of the dreams features his father attacking his mother with a knife Haymitch recognizes as the one he used in the arena, he is more resolute than ever not to succumb.
But after the third nightmare in a row, he refuses to go back to sleep, and just lies there in the darkness with a residual feeling of terror at nothing in particular, feeling his heartbeat, loud and pounding in his ears. It competes with the hum of the high-speed train gliding along its tracks, and he wonders how the hell he's going to make through ten more of these things.
With each city, he stays quieter and quieter, giving as little as he can, saying next to nothing if he's in a District where he's killed a tribute. As they get through each round of interviews in each district - Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, he notices the journalists getting younger or sometimes older, but in each case, quite obviously less prestigious, to the point where Lucilla corners him in his room in the District Six Justice Hall after his interview, wagging her gold-painted fingernails at him in frustration.
“I don't know what you think you're accomplishing with this gloom and doom act,” she complains. “I actually got a call about you this evening from the focus groups team!”
“Oh?” Haymitch barely raises one eyebrow, to show how little he could care about what the Capitol citizenry has to say on the matter. His mood isn't being helped by all the nightmares he keeps having.
“Yes, I did!” Lucilla insists on her angry righteousness. “They are concerned that you're not being outgoing enough. The focus groups are saying you don’t engage enough with the journalists, that you frown too much. People in the Capitol are actually tuning out; that almost never happens with the Victory Tour specials. They are practically guaranteed ratings killers!”
When he merely scowls at her, she adjusts her purple wig obsessively, even though every inch of her is a perfectly groomed portrait of Capitol fashion. “Whatever happened to the cocky young man I saw with Caesar Flickerman?” she tries in despair. “He at least had a roguish charm.”
“I guess he grew up and killed some children,” he growls at her.
“It's a game!” she retorts. “That's how the game works! And look at you! Repaid for your great risk and clever cunning with unending glory in the annals of the Capitol, and money to last a lifetime! Surely you see how much better off your life is since the Hunger Games.”
Haymitch is surprised into a good long stare of disbelief. “You don't think of us as real people at all, do you?” he shouts.
It surprises him even more when she is left bereft by his unfiltered remark. “How dare you say such a thing to me, Haymitch Abernathy? Of course you're real people, with lives and stories and families back home! You think we forget that? Why do you think we make a point of interviewing each tribute with Caesar before the Games? Why have an escort to do your publicity? It's so no matter what happens in the arena, the stories of all you brave young men and women, who sacrifice their lives for the good of Panem, will not be lost.”
With those self-righteous and hideously clueless words ringing in his ears, Haymitch turns and punches a hole in the wall beside them, no mean feat considering the building is over eight hundred years old and made of plaster. She visibly flinches, in a terribly familiar way, and for a moment, his heart races in a familiar way too, like he's back home in Twelve, trapped in one of those moments where he can see his dad about to explode with anger and there's nothing he can do to stop it.
His fists open, and he self-consciously puts his hands back down at his sides, making sure she sees it, even as he feels his heart pounding like crazy.
“I'll see you in the morning, Lucilla,” he mutters, but he can't look her in the eye anymore.
She takes the hint and leaves. “Early day tomorrow,” she says, her voice shaken and muted as she reaches the door. “Breakfast at 7 a.m. Be on time, for once.”
He nods as he hears her leave, and finds his eyes focusing on the sideboard in his room which contains an assortment of expensive bottles of liquor. He strides over as soon as she's gone and picks up one of the heavier bottles, considering the label a moment - Capitol Cognac - before he smashes it with a furious satisfaction against the wall. He grabs another bottle and another and smashes them all, letting the rage overtake him, enjoying the sound of smashing glass and the sight of the brown and amber liquids streaming wastefully down the wall. The stains on the antique floral wallpaper run in chaotic lines that he knows will never scrub away, and he finds that utterly pleasing, until an Avox shows up out of nowhere at the sound of breaking glass, his expression frantic as he flees to the adjoining bathroom and emerges with a towel to mop up the mess. Haymitch can hear the Avox's shoes crunching atop the shards of broken glass as he starts his work.
“No, no!” he exclaims, horrified at the submissive terror his actions have inspired in this man who is easily twice his age. “Please don't do that. I'll take care of it. It's my mess, I'll clean it up.”
The Avox's eyes widen with … surprise? Fear? Confusion? Then he waves at Haymitch with the towel and shakes his head before returning to his task.
“Leave it, I said!” he roars, and instantly regrets it as the Avox literally jumps backward a step, and turns quickly around, as if getting a predator in his sights. Haymitch feels shame wash over him as he wonders what the Avox did to be punished like this. Did he try to run away from his district? Did he just fuck something important up, or is he what Snow meant when he talked about the seeds of rebellion? Did this guy stand up to the Capitol, not symbolically like Haymitch, but in a real way?
Raising his hands up at the man in a placating gesture, Haymitch struggles to make his voice even, soft, generous and unthreatening. Basically the opposite of everything about Randall Abernathy's voice. “I 'm sorry,” he breathes. “I shouldn't have. You'll get in trouble if I make you leave it, won't you?”
The Avox nods with a worried expression, then quickly looks back at the stained wall, now that Haymitch has made it clear he's not a threat.
“Can I at least help you?” he asks.
The Avox shakes his head emphatically, and waves at Haymitch again, clearly dismissing him. For a moment, Haymitch considers getting the hell out of there, running away from the shame of it, but then he frowns, falling onto the bed with a loud thump, making himself watch the Avox work.
He lets the sound of crunching glass fill his ears and inhales deeply the aroma of spilt alcohol hanging in the air, punishing himself with it.
The Avox will probably never appreciate his intentions, but Haymitch does it anyway; he figures it's the least he can do.
**
District Five has no current living victor, and at first, Haymitch thinks that he will at least get some relief from having to stare across the stage at someone who resents him for surviving. And at least in this district, he didn't kill anyone.
But as it turns out, the media onslaught is actually worse to face alone, with no one else to relieve him even for a minute from entertaining the Capitol. At least in the other districts, the journalists assigned to his interviews had started figuring out what Haymitch was going to be like, and had planned accordingly: They had taken to asking him a few standard questions, showing a few of his impressive moments on screen - the force field moment excluded, of course - then quickly moving on to a program that's been adjusted to be less of the “tell us what was it like” variety and more about analysis of this year's games, an approach where any previous victor in attendance can easily find threads to pick up and discuss, leaving Haymitch to sit scowling in his chair.
But this is not the case in District Five, where the spotlight is all Haymitch's.
Marcus Keppeler, a famous but middle-aged has-been talk show host in the Capitol, has been brought in to deal with him today, and it's clear that Haymitch's reputation has preceded him and Keppeler is not pleased. Before the cameras start rolling, Keppeler glares at his prey from the tall-backed leather chair that looks out of place in the poverty of this district, even in front of the grand Justice Hall. His only words to Haymitch before they go live come out terse and impatient: “By the way, President Snow is watching tonight.”
Haymitch swears his heart stops. Can Keppeler really know what is at stake here? Would Snow tell the man something like that?
No, it can't be. Keppler just knows the importance of performing well when the President is watching; that's all, right?
Yet the threat cows him enough that he actually does try to make an effort. But he's so rattled now, the interview is just a slow disaster. He tries to banter, but his timing is off. Despite the words he wielded like a weapon before the cameras came on, Keppeler clearly wasn't expecting any big change out of Haymitch, and so he misses at first that Haymitch is making jokes and then tries to cover the awkwardness that ensues with improvised changes of subject that get them nowhere conversationally. Finally, in desperation, the host tries one last area he clearly hopes will be harmless and garner some audience interest.
“So Haymitch,” he begins. “You must be getting a lot of attention from the ladies in your district now that you're a celebrity.”
Haymitch squints at him in surprise at this tack, but Keppler sends him a look implicitly telling him to roll with it. “You may not know this, but we ran a poll especially for this program where we asked fans to name their favorite tribute from the last ten years, alive or dead. You came in number three on that list, did you know that?”
Haymitch shakes his head, knowing he should pull out his cocky persona from the Games, but he's having trouble producing it. The question is so ridiculous and he doesn't understand where it is going.
“Is your escort forwarding you all the fan mail you're getting in the Capitol?” Keppeler asks. “From what we hear, you've got plenty of admirers of both genders, including President Snow's daughter.”
The audience oohs and aahs at that revelation with just a touch of scandalized appreciation, but Haymitch is distracted, the reference to both genders reminding him of Flax and Melio in Eleven. A memory of Melio's fingers crawling affectionately across Flax's shoulders, in a way that his father never would have done with his mother makes Haymitch tense up almost impercetibly, and blinds him temporarily to the larger-than-life image being flashed onto the screen behind Keppeler.
It's Alsey. She's smiling. She babbling excitedly about him on the television. For a bewildering millisecond, Haymitch's brain thinks this means that she is alive, and he gapes at the garish, deafening, fifty-foot sight of her. What the fuck is going on?
The soft strings playing underneath her words are the cue that finally let him understand what this is. Of course. He's never seen this footage, but it must have been filmed during Training Week, when they make profiles of all the tributes, the Capitol's way of generating interest in more tributes than just the Careers. Otherwise, no one would sponsor any tributes except the Ones, Twos and Fours, and Capitol forbid that the Games ever become boring.
“Now what does your pretty Miss Alsey think of all this attention you're getting?” Keppeler leans in with a confidential smile. “You can tell us: is she jealous?”
Haymitch is suddenly sure that all his nerve endings are on fire. Is this question a coincidence, or did Snow put Keppeler up to it? How the fuck is he going to answer? He suddenly thinks of Alsey's parents watching, and the idea of having to lie about her in public leaves him gutted and speechless.
The dead air prompts Keppeler to turn to the audience with that same confidential smile, as if Haymitch isn't there. “Ah, I see,” he says with an insinuating air. “He doesn't want to get into trouble with his best girl, methinks.” He turns back to Haymitch with a pleased light in his eye, thrilled to have found a topic with some traction.
“Well, come now, Clever Haymitch,” he banters. “That was your nickname in the Games, wasn't it?”
After a moment, the audience's murmurs of approval confirm this fact and he gives them a broad smile and a wink before turning back to his prey. “You were clever enough to win the Games six months ago; surely you can talk your way out of this one.”
The audience laughs, and Keppeler eats it up. For the first time in ages, he's got the audience in the palm of his hand, and he's unwilling to let go.
Haymitch stares straight ahead, unseeing, eyes filled with the image of President Snow in his mansion, watching a viewscreen. “She isn't with me anymore,” he says in a monotone. He can't look at Keppeler's face; he can't, or he knows he'll lose it.
The audience groans in sympathy. They can tell from Haymitch's stiff demeanor that this parting was against his will. Keppeler joins in with them melodramatically. “Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that,” he says.
“Are you up to telling us what happened?”
Haymitch still can't meet anyone's eye. What the fuck is he supposed to say? Is Snow going to punish him for this? Fuck.
He can hear his own voice cracking with emotion, and he hates everyone and everything in the world right now.
“She, um … she ... died.” His hands are shaking on his lap. Shit, shit, shit. Why did he just say that? Snow told him to keep it quiet. What has he just gone and done?
Another gasp from the audience. “Uh … it was a few months ago,” he adds, dropping the pitch of his words in a drastic way that he hopes communicates to Keppeler to please stop this line of questioning. But Keppeler senses ratings gold, and goes in for the kill.
“Oh, Haymitch,” he says in his best sympathetic voice. “That is a tragedy. Alsey seemed like such a nice girl when we interviewed her. She got very high ratings with our audiences. If it's any comfort, it was obvious to everyone how much she loved you, and how much you loved her.”
Of course it's not any fucking comfort at all. But it's not like he can say that. “Could we please stop talking about this, Marcus?” he begs instead, hating being on display like this, terrified of the question that will surely come next, knowing he will have to manufacture a convincing lie or else endanger more lives. “It's a very emotional topic for me,” he tries.
Marcus reaches in and pats Haymitch on the arm. “Of course it is. But you can see how this is shocking news to all of us who followed your story. There are going to be some very heartbroken viewers in the Capitol tonight, I can assure you of that.” He pauses. “Do you think you could just explain to us briefly how Alsey died? Everyone, I'm sure, wants to know.”
Haymitch covers his eyes with his palms to hide the sudden fury. Snow already has taken his family, taken Alsey, and now he's probably already sitting in his office watching, plotting how to punish Haymitch for what he just said. The last thing Haymitch needs is to provoke him more. But Haymitch won't let Snow take the truth too, at least not like this. He can't make up some stupid lie about what happened to her. He just can't.
He hunches in the fancy chair for what must be a full minute, wondering how to get out of this, while everyone around him sits waiting in polite, rapt silence. Even the District Five audience has been shocked out of its passive resentment and is hanging on tenterhooks to find out what's coming.
“Please don't ask me to talk about it, Marcus,” he repeats lamely. “I can't. I just can't.” He tries to pretend to be on the verge of tears, but actually right now, he wants to punch something, wants to take a hammer to Marcus Keppeler's ridiculous hair-sprayed green wig, preferably with Keppeler still underneath it.
“All right, all right, Haymitch.” Keppeler finally has no choice to back off or look cruel. “I understand. It's obvious this is quite painful for you.”
Haymitch can tell that he's secretly annoyed, but he couldn't give a fuck right now. He's just glad Keppeler is ending this nightmare and that in a minute, he can go hide out in his room in the Justice Hall and pray he won't come home to a dead father or a punished district. Despite his words to Snow, he knows the instant he thinks about it that he can't live with any more deaths on his hands. There are a few perfunctory words to wrap up the interview and then Keppeler addresses the camera, urging them to tune in two nights from now, when Haymitch will be in District Four.
The second the red light on the cameras go out, Haymitch is up and leaving the dais without permission, Lucilla's protests from across the stage buzzing like mosquitoes in his ears.
**
He gets to his room first, but within minutes, Lucilla is banging on his door, half-ordering, half-begging him to let her in.
“Go the fuck away!” he yells at the door, but she's surprisingly persistent, and there's something immediate in her voice that despite his better judgment, makes him get up from the luxurious bed littered with useless and uncomfortable throw pillows.
When he opens the door, she's got ugly streaks of mascara running down her cheeks. She's been obviously crying hard, and for a moment he's confused. “What do you want, Lucilla?”
To his surprise, she just hugs him as tight as she can, all her lace and taffeta and buttons pressing into him. “I'm so sorry, Haymitch. I'm sorry about Alsey. I had no idea ... I'm sorry I never got to meet her.”
“Then she means nothing to you,” he snaps at her, not wanting the job of processing her grief for her. “She's just another one of your damn stories in the annals of the Capitol.” He knows he's being cruel, but he's both too exhausted and too angry right now to care. He's also calculating enough to know that this is the precise level of harshness that will cut her deeply, and will probably make her go away.
Except that she doesn't. She grabs his elbow without a word and shuts the door behind her with a high-heeled foot. At first, he thinks she's going to pull him to the table and chair to talk, but instead, she guides him into the luxurious bathroom, turns the sink water tap on full blast, then brings him back into a tight embrace.
“When I arrived in District Twelve for this tour, you told me Alsey didn't want to talk to me and that your mother was too sick to be interviewed,” she whispers into his ear. “You ran interference about your family the entire day and a half we were there, and you completely lied about Alsey, so tell me the truth: what's really happened?”
His eyes widen, and his hands grab hers, not sure why he suddenly trusts her with something this big. “I can't talk to you about it,” he whispers as low as he possibly can.
“I'm not allowed to talk about it. If they hear me ...”
“You know what I think you need after that stressful appearance, Haymitch?” Lucilla says in a much louder voice. “A good, relaxing bath.”
Before he knows it, she's turned off the sink taps and is running the bathtub ones instead, which make even more noise. It's a luxury tub, deep, and with jets of rushing water on all sides. “These kinds of tubs take about twenty minutes or so before they're full,” she says in a low, serious voice Haymitch has not heard before. “In the Capitol, you do this when you want to make sure a conversation will be truly private.”
He's bewildered as she takes his hand and holds it in hers and they sit on the tub's edge side by side.
“So if you want,” she says, “for the next twenty minutes, I'm here, all right?” .
**
In the end, they don't talk much about it, because it's awful to say, and besides, he keeps getting distracted, checking the running water to see how much time they have left. But he tells her about the executions, about President Snow's visit. With the release of finally telling someone the truth about what's going on, he's unable to stop himself from crying a little, but she squeezes his hand, and after a minute, he pulls himself together as she turns off the spigots and the room turns eerily quiet by comparison. “Thanks,” is all he says, aware again of the bugs. Lucilla just nods. By silent agreement, they slide down from the tub's edge together, sitting on the bathroom floor in silence, hands already separated.
He doesn't tell her about the loneliness, or about his father, or the nightmares of the arena, or any of the other things he's struggling with, because he can tell by her expression that she's already gotten way more than she bargained for and she doesn't know how to do much more than listen and put her arm around him for comfort, but she's surprisingly good at that. He startles when her arm first falls across his back, then tenses up, stiff in the half-embrace. But she leaves it there, and eventually, he calms down and lays his head on her shoulder and it feels nice somehow.
He worries a little afterwards that he perhaps shouldn't have told her. Her expression is grim and there is an aura about her now, like she wishes she could unhear things.
“You're not like you were an hour ago,” he says, yawning as she walks him out of the bathroom and straight to the bed, where she tucks him in like a mother. He's too grateful and too exhausted to even object, never mind resist.
“Listen to you,” she softly teases him. “You just don't know how to stop being clever, do you?” He can hear a slight manic edge to her words as she strokes his dark curls over and over, but he's drifting quickly into sleep and has no idea how to address it anyway. “No talking now,” she orders. “Just sleep. You need it. I'll see you in the morning.”
He has a nightmare a couple of hours later about his reaping. Except that instead of he and Maysilee, it's him and Lucilla being reaped. Alsey is there too, but she's dressed in Capitol garb, and he realizes that she is their escort. As Alsey draws the names, Lucilla is crying and begging her to explain why she's been reaped, and Alsey tells her there's no reason; it's just how the world works. Lucilla only cries harder. Haymitch feels like he's got a hole in his heart because somehow he knows that all of this is all his fault and there's no going back now; they're both in the arena whether they like it or not.
He wakes with his heart thumping wildly in the dark, and is surprised to see Lucilla - the real flesh and blood Lucilla - asleep in a chair near his bed. He lies there for a while watching her disheveled figure until the rise and fall of her breathing lulls him back into slumber for the rest of a dreamless night.
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