#obviously peeta is ready to sacrifice himself for her too

[sanjarka]

I'M GONNA SCREAM THIS CAUSE I DON'T THINK ENOUGH PEOPLE ARE LISTENING. YOU DO REALIZE THAT IF KATNISS DIDN'T HAVE ANY ACTUAL FEELINGS FOR PEETA IF HIS DEATH WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN SOMETHING EXTREMELY PERSONAL FOR HER SHE WOULD'VE JUST LEFT HIM TO BLEED OUT IN THE FIRST GAMES. IT WASN'T (JUST) ABOUT DOING THE "RIGHT" THING AND BEING HUMAN AND NOT KILLING HER DISTRICT PARTNER. HE WAS ALREADY DEAD. IT WAS ABOUT WHO HE WAS TO HER. THE BOY WITH THE BREAD. SOMEONE SHE WAS STARTING TO LOVE.

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

Black and blue

(Hayffie after midnight before the third Quarter Quell. Sensual fluffy angst? I’m not sure how else to describe this. 💗)

What’s left after the world takes a mallet to your illusions? When you realize the career you’ve built is a house of cards that you wrote for other people to read. Your words were co-opted as a script, within a game that hurts and never ends. What’s left when at last you understand that your primary function has been to make it all seem pretty? The words, the players, the game — even the hurting.

Tears are left. So you cry until your eyes are sucken and as empty as you feel inside. Your tears touch the ink on the cards that you wrote and live within. The words wash away in streaks of black and blue. The hurt is real. Perhaps it’s the only thing that’s been real all along.

***

Effie couldn’t sleep that night with shattered illusions. She’d replaced her dress with a silk robe, gold in color. Another token. This recognition drew more tears up from the emptiness. Her wig sparkled on its stand, ready for tomorrow. She clung to the notion that tokens could keep them together to the end: she and her victors. With shattered illusions in a dissolving house of cards, there wasn’t much to hold.

She brushed her real hair and tried to remove her makeup with the usual routine. The preceding hours of crying had pulled black and blue from her eyes down to her cheekbones. Those saltwater streaks of hurt were dreadful. Trying to wash them away only made it all worse.

She sat on the edge of the bed and searched her bag for the industrial makeup remover which she used for these kinds of emergencies. This act felt as false as the cards and the script and the game. This was pain that she was trying to cleanse and make pretty. Her own pain.

She lay back on the bed with the found bottle in hand. She didn’t want to use it. Tonight she wanted the hurt. She wanted the ugliness. She’d earned it, and she deserved a moment to feel it without washing it away.

***

Earlier when Katniss had asked Haymitch for last advice, he told her to stay alive. Haymitch felt those words as a sense of purpose. Helping her stay alive felt more vital and interesting than anything he’d had the chance to do in a quarter of a century. Thinking about that length of time highlighted the waste of so much life. Effie was right. Those kids deserved much more than this waste. All of them deserve more.

The plan was in place to try to keep Katniss alive in order to play the game in a different arena with new rules that Snow wouldn’t get to dictate. Haymitch had spent the evening facilitating Plutarch’s moves and making some of his own. He’d given Finnick the bangle along with some language to use with Katniss. He’d kept his promise of a drink with Chaff.

“Last call, my friend,” was his buddy’s toast.

Life hadn’t left Haymitch with many tears still inside. Nonetheless, he swallowed some down with the alcohol.

“What is this shit?” he raised the half-empty glass, speaking casually, as if it was any other night of shared drinks.

“Some fancy Capitol booze. These people wouldn’t know good liquor if it hit them over the head.”

“Actually, that might be a better place to put it.”

They drank awhile in silence. The absence of his friend’s laughter was like the memory of an axe in his own gut.

“One more toast,” Haymitch added, “...To staying alive.”

“To the Mockingjay,” Chaff whispered in case the walls had ears.

Haymitch understood his friend’s priorities and willingness to sacrifice. He hated that it had come to this. “I’m not saying goodbye to you.”

“‘See you later’ works just as well now as ever.”

They clapped each other on the backs, hugging longer than usual.

“Haymitch, you better not grab my ass, or I’m going to have to hit YOU over the head with this empty bottle.” Chaff joked, knowing they both needed a last laugh as much as the drink.

“How about you keep your ass, and I’ll see you later.”

Chaff nodded. “I’ll see you later, friend.”

***

Haymitch couldn’t swallow all the emotions as he headed back to his room. One annoying tear spilled onto his cheek, and he wiped it away quicker than it had fallen.

“Fuck this shit,” he muttered, as angry as he was upset.

As he passed Effie’s room, he saw light shining from below the door. He paused to listen. She was crying.

“Damn it,” he whispered, “Is there anybody who doesn’t need help tonight?”

He raised his knuckles to the door and leaned his forehead against it in a mixture of exhaustion and other feelings he didn’t want to think about. It was late. He shouldn’t knock. He should try to get a few hours of sleep now with the alcohol still in his veins.

Her crying was soft, soulful some would say. His knuckles had a will of their own, rapping gently against the door. “Effie?” His voice had a will of its own, calling her name. Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was the feelings that he didn’t want to think about.

She glanced at the clock. It was well past midnight. What is Haymitch doing here? Her first thought was concern for Katniss and Peeta. She dragged herself off the bed and moved to the door, but she didn’t open it.

“Are they alright? Is something wrong?”

“I was going to ask you the same question. Will you open the door?”

“I’m not decent.”

“Me neither, sweetheart. Just open the door.”

Her concern for her victors won out over her vanity. Haymitch was dressed the same as earlier. The thin shirt he wore did little to hide his body. She was irked by the fact that she noticed this now of all times. Her attraction to him was constantly irritating, like sand that she couldn’t quite shake off her skin.

The sight of her was a blend of macabre and erotic. He hadn’t expected this goddess-of-the-underworld look. A dozen quips ran through his mind, but he said none of them. She’d obviously been crying a long time. He stepped inside without invitation.

“What are you doing here? What’s wrong with Katniss and Peeta?”

“You mean aside from them being forced back into the arena in a few hours to kill or be killed?”

Effie struggled to hold back more tears. This existential angst was too much to take. She lost the fight. Tears spilled silently, lengthening the tracks of black and blue that ran down her cheeks.

“Come here.” Haymitch’s feelings were too close to the edge for him to say anything else. She was already there. They were already touching, fitting into one another’s emptiness.

“Everything is wrong,” she sobbed onto his neck.

Without her 5 inch heels, giant wigs, and corsets, the feeling of her against his body was different. She was all silk right now and unarmored nakedness. A strand of her hair caught on the stubble of his jaw, and he didn’t reach to free it. He just let her tangle with him.

Tonight she was like one of those yellow birds he used to see as a kid in the Seam before all the trees had been turned to firewood. The birds’ chatter and song kept him company on his long walks to and from school. By the time his brother was old enough to walk with him, those birds were gone. He’d never learned their names.

Everything had always been wrong. Living with ghosts wouldn’t change their fate. But Effie was no ghost. She was present and voluptuous, and for a moment he allowed himself to feel it.

“You should wear this shirt more often,” she said. Her tears had stopped, but she didn’t pull away. Through the light fabric, she could feel the solidity of his body and the warmth of his skin. With shattered illusions in a dissolving house of cards, he was something worth holding. He was something real.

“You should wear this outfit more often too.” He didn’t pull away either. He was enjoying the feeling of her too much, and the alcohol helped him not care that it was too much.

“What would Caesar say about this one?” she smirked.

“He’d say you’re a goddess.” Haymitch said without jest, caressing the small of her back. Just once.

“You’re drunk.” She tried to make light of what was happening here, because otherwise she was going to fuck him. And he’d let her. She was certain.

“Not tonight,” he said.

Effie had lost track of their conversation. Was he reading her mind?

“Not tonight?”

“I’m not drunk tonight. I see clearly how you are.”

“How am I? Dressed for death?”

He pulled back to look at her eyes, not at the eeriness of her makeup, but deeper into the black of her pupils and the blue of her irises. He held her hips. His body was responding to her in ways he didn’t want to stop right now. Maybe he should stop, but he really didn’t want to.

“Why should I NOT dress for death.” Quiet crept into her voice. “After all, it’s what I dress other people for. It’s what I do, Haymitch.”

He couldn’t argue with the truth. Her self-awareness surprised him.

“You deserve better,” he said.

His perspective surprised her. He usually covered compassion with mocking sarcasm.

“There’s so much to you.” She traced her thumb along his throat and settled in the hollow between his collarbones. “I want to see it all.”

Her touch and her request stirred him. “It’s scary shit, honey. Dressing kids for death is nothing compared to it. Everybody thinks they want to see it, until they see it. Then once they do, it’s the only thing they can see.”

“I’m not everybody.”

“Time will tell.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Time tells everyone’s secrets if they live long enough.” He ran his fingers through her hair, remembering again those yellow birds.

Her eyes closed. Foregoing the pleasure of someone’s fingertips along her scalp was a price she paid for being a fashion icon. For a moment, she wanted nothing more than this. His hands in her hair — what else mattered?

“Would you help me fall asleep?” she asked with her eyes still closed.

The feeling of her, raw like this... The reality that he didn’t know when he’d see her after tomorrow... The possibility that he never would... For all these reasons, he’d do almost anything for her right now.

“Sure, sweetheart.”

For the first time since he entered her room, she let go of him long enough to turn down the bed and slide between the sheets. The bottle of makeup remover fell to the floor, forgotten. She’d find it in the morning.

Haymitch covered her with a blanket and lay down beside her without taking off his shoes and without slipping under the covers. If he took off his shoes and held her body, he was going to fuck her. And she’d let him. He was certain.

She’d asked to sleep, and sleep is what she needed. She had no idea what tomorrow would hold, and he couldn’t anticipate what would happen to her. He already had too many regrets. He didn’t want to bring her into any more.

He rested his head close to hers and stroked her hair like before. He could lose himself in her, this real version of her, if he was the kind of man who could let go of that much control. But he wasn’t that man.

She pressed her hand to his sternum. His heartbeat was wild. Sex with him would be wild. Not tonight, filled with so much sadness, but sometime. She WOULD see inside him. It was a promise she made to herself.

He plucked a few kisses from her eyelid down her cheek, tracing the tracks of her tears. “You know, this whole watercolor eye thing you’ve got going on tonight could be the next big trend.”

“Don’t be wicked.” She slid her hand up to the base of his throat without pressure, and she kissed his mouth. The kiss was tender and brief. Her lips were open so he could take more if he wanted.

He returned a kiss exactly the same as the one she’d offered, without taking more. Even still, they were crossing a line. They both could feel it behind them as he ran his fingers through her hair again.

“I like you.” Her voice was sleepy now. “Don’t break my heart.”

“Close your eyes, honey. I’ll stay until you fall asleep.”

She was still young. He could see it in this light without so much makeup. 30 maybe? How could a murderer and a drunk not break her heart? How could a revolution not break her heart?

When her breathing turned even, he caressed the black and blue streaks on her face. He couldn’t protect her from heartbreak which was already happening. He kissed her forehead, confessing in hushed tones, “Damn, I like you. I always have.”

He left quietly, locking the door and closing it behind him. In the hallway, he added the words he wouldn’t burden her with now, awake or asleep. “Stay alive, sweetheart. I don’t do promises, but if we survive this, I’ll show you anything you want to see.”