Chapter Text
A/N: Hello again! Once again, my wife said something, the idea got under my skin, and here we are thousands of words later. I locked in so hard on this fic, the idea would not leave me alone. I promise, I will go back to my other WIPs soon. We wrote this as a response to the thought that Lenore Dove surviving would not have made her or Haymitch happier. With that in mind:
WARNINGS FOR THE WHOLE FIC (NOT ALL IN THIS CHAPTER): codependency, toxic relationship patterns, infidelity (on both sides), alcoholism, drug use, suicidal ideation, pet death, pregnancy, infant loss, allusions to rape.
Please heed these warnings. This is not a happy fic. The world of THG and the individual trauma these characters go through does not make for a happy fairytale ending.
Chapter title from The Tortured Poets Department by Taylor Swift, fic title from No Children by The Mountain Goats. I'm on Tumblr and Twitter @maximoffvizh, come hang out and partake in my current THG obsession.
On with the sads! If you enjoy, please leave a comment and let me know. Have fun!
Lenore Dove is dying, she's dying, her eyes rolling frantically, bloody froth between her lips, and when he spins his shirt off as if it will somehow help her something rattles in the pocket.
He grabs for it, finds a tiny jar of lumpy black charcoal tablets, and maybe it's poison too but he doesn't question it, because the small chance that she will live is more than that.
So he holds it to her lips, same as the gumdrop, hands shaking, begs her, "Take it, sweetheart, please."
The meadow holds its breath when she swallows, the sun stilling, his hand frozen against her lips, the warmth in her skin. Roses in her cheeks. Her eyes meet his, the whites bloodshot and terrified, and her voice is rough when she says, "Take me home."
"My love-"
"I want my uncles," she whispers, and how can he deny her anything.
He lifts her arm around his shoulders, staggers her back to the tumbledown house. Her geese honk at him when he tumbles them through the gate, yelling for her uncles. They stare at him with sharp beaks and angry dark eyes, wings rustling like a threat, and he realises in a short moment that birds may no longer be his favourite creatures.
But no time to think of pink birds and long sharp beaks decorated in blood. Tam Amber appears in the doorway, grabs Lenore Dove out of his arms and screams for Clerk Carmine.
Haymitch just stands there in a puddle of sunlight, the geese watching him, and when Clerk Carmine sees him those eyes immediately narrow. A low mutter of, "What did you do?"
"CC," Tam Amber warns. "Go to town. Get Agate or Edelweiss."
Clerk Carmine brushes past Haymitch so hard he's almost knocked to the ground, frozen staring at Tam Amber laying Lenore Dove down on the rug in the doorway. Pushing her hair back from her face, rocking her, whispering, "Not another one."
He waits with the geese, loathe to take a step into that home. When Edelweiss arrives, golden hair wrapped into a tight bun like she means business, he stands frantically, jabbering, "She ate something...poison...I gave her charcoal."
"Let me work," she says, and she looks at him with so much pity it weighs him down.
Clerk Carmine closes the door on him, and he's forced to watch everything through the windows. Lights flickering on, silhouettes behind the raggedy curtains, the low murmur of voices through thin glass. Never able to entirely make out what they're saying, but recognising Tam Amber's low burr, Clerk Carmine's anger in a higher pitch, Edelweiss soothing them both.
He doesn't know how long he sits there. The geese rustle through the grass, and start slipping to their sleep, heads tucked beneath their wings. He thinks of Lenore Dove's head tucked into his shoulder in the sunlight, looks for the moon reflecting the sun, but the sky is dark. New moon.
Lenore Dove told him once that the new moon meant new beginnings. He sits in the damp grass, staring at the lit windows, and hopes that it doesn't mean his new beginning without her.
Dark has settled velvet into the sky by the time he hears the door squeak open, jerks to his feet and finds Edelweiss staring at him. "She'll live," she says, and his eyes fill with instant tears of relief.
"She's okay?" squeaks out of him, and Edelweiss' face falls into shadow.
"I said she'll live, Haymitch, not that she's okay," she says. "I daresay her uncles do not want you in there. Go home."
"But-"
The door opens again, and Tam Amber steps out into the night, pipe in hand. He stares Haymitch down across the garden, the fires of his forge in his eyes, and snaps, "CC said you'd be trouble, boy. Keep away from her."
"I didn't mean for her to get hurt-"
"Well she is," he snaps, and turns away, looking out across the woods. Haunted by a ghost Haymitch can't see, and he thinks of the girl in the rainbow dress on the television set in his recovery prison. The girl who looked so much like Lenore Dove.
He trips home in the dark, back to the lonely Victor's Village, pitches himself into the mattress and the nightmares rise up to meet him.
Clerk Carmine hardly leaves her side for a week. Edelweiss comes by every day with new medicines, new notebooks, her round handwriting listing the symptoms. Something new every day. Soaring fever. Blood in her coughing. Her stiff, shaking hands. The mere thought of food making her ill.
She can't speak. Can't scream for them to leave her alone, to let her back to her meadow, to let her lead the geese into the sunlight. She tries to defy, spitting out the food Clerk Carmine forces on her, tearing her head away from their attentions, from the cool cloths her Aunt Ember places across her forehead.
But she's too weak even to rebel. Even against her family.
Every time she closes her eyes, she tastes the gumdrops, the acrid leak of poison into her throat, the powder of the charcoal. Feels that burn through her veins, the way she lost control of her body, like her limbs were cut off one by one. An old puppet, strings rotted away, dancing hopelessly.
Tam Amber comes to her on the fifth day and says, "Someone's here."
"Haymitch?" she croaks. Her voice is weak, sharp, ugly. Nothing of what it used to be.
Her uncle's eyebrow just arches, and it's Blair in her doorway, shy smile on his soft face. Tam Amber watches them, twisting at his wedding ring the way he always does when he's nervous, and Blair comes to kneel at Lenore Dove's side, asking, "How are you doing?"
"Bad," she whispers, and watches the realisation of what's happened to her voice hit him. Clerk Carmine used to say she could melt the snow with her song, make the flowers rise early just to hear it. They told her after she was born the spring came early, that the honeysuckles on their fence grew higher just to see her.
Blair blinks, and his face settles again. He opens the ragged bag on his side, and says, "I took on a couple shifts in the Tunnelbys' compound this week. Fucked my shoulder. But earned some coin to take to the bakery."
He takes out a twisted brown bag marked with the bakery logo, steaming hot and so full it's splitting soft at the edges. For the first time in days, her nose wrinkles eagerly at the smell of food, the soft scones jewelled with fruit, the glistening bread, the cake iced with such grace and care.
"Otho says he hopes you feel better," Blair says, a sweet little smile on his face.
"This is too much, son," Tam Amber says, stepping closer, breaking off a piece of scone.
"I wanted to help," he says, and pulls out a bottle of milk too. The good stuff, glass bottle, gold cap.
Lenore Dove reaches out, breaks off a piece of cake, lets it linger in her mouth. Sweet, soft, easy. She blinks at Blair, and asks, "Have you seen him?" He shakes his head, and she asks, "Will you see him? For me?"
He nods, his eyes soft, and asks, "Want me to tell him anything?"
"To meet me in the meadow," she says, and Blair nods. She sees him watch her for a second later, a moment like a tiny flame, and looks away.
Bread and milk becomes her food for a few days. Like her geese. It makes her stronger, lets her stumble to wash, tying a yellow scarf around her curls and going out into the sunlight. To bloom like a flower beneath it, her geese nudging her arms while she scatters food for them, the wind on her skin and the sky above her.
The first time she tries to leave the confines of the garden, Tam Amber appears from nowhere, a snap of, "Absolutely not."
"But-"
"Walk up and down the stairs without getting winded before you try that, young lady," he snaps.
So she does. Marches up and down them until she doesn't have to lean against the wall. She tries to find herself again, though her hands still shake and she can't pluck at the strings of the guitar in the house. She tries.
But the poison stole her song. It's one of those moments where she longs for her mother, sitting alone in the room with the old guitar in her hands, her sob caught tight in her ruined throat. She dreams of a delicate hand on her shoulder, a soft voice of encouragement. Maybe her mother would set her free, not cage her up like her uncles.
Two weeks trapped at home, she finally slips out into the sun. Walks halfway to the meadow before she gets dizzy, before her torn up body betrays her, her lungs shrinking around every breath.
Mason finds her. He scoops her into his arms, green eyes twinkling, and says, "CC is going to lock you up like a princess in an old story for this, Lenore Dove."
She closes her eyes against his truth, but he's been with her uncle since before she can remember, a constant steady presence. Clerk Carmine starts yelling as soon as Mason steps across the house, and not even his boyfriend's soothing stops it, his face red with rage.
Tam Amber starts to join in when he comes home, after Clerk Carmine has spilled out the story in angry jolts, but Ember lays a hand on his shoulder. "Tamber," she whispers, and he looks, and Lenore Dove watches an entire conversation spool out in their eyes. "She wants freedom. Let her."
"But-"
"I'll take her to the meadow," Mason volunteers, and Clerk Carmine's face thunders. "Don't look at me like that, my love. I can carry her home. I can take the wheelbarrow."
"I...I'm not riding in the wheelbarrow," Lenore Dove wheezes out, and Mason gives her a grin and a wink.
When she does make it to the meadow, Haymitch is waiting for her. She sees the way his dark curls eat the sunlight, make a meal of it in shining drops through the spirals, his ragged clothes that seem to be the same as they were the day they found each other again. He sits with his back to her, eyes to the woods, on the mockingjays in the trees.
She tries to whistle for them, to light up the leaves with her song, but her notes get stuck somewhere in her throat.
He turns then, the sunlight limning the shape of his nose, his jaw, his newly-prominent cheekbones, and shock immediately ices his face before the smile melts it away.
When he takes her in his arms this time, clutching too tight, her bones press together, and when he lets go she asks, "Where have you been?"
"Your uncles didn't want me to see you-"
"Why didn't you try?" she snipes, the words coming out sharp, poison-tipped. She doesn't know why.
He breathes out, and she smells the sharpness of white liquor on his breath. His eyes are bloodshot, dark shadows beneath them pressed like flower petals into his skin. His fingers dig into her back, so tight she winces at the pinch, and he whispers, "I thought you might be dead."
"I'm not," she whispers, and kisses him.
The liquor lingers on his tongue, and she pretends that it doesn't sink a foreboding into her bones.
He thought it would be better that Lenore Dove lived. The unused charcoal tablets live in a drawer in the empty kitchen of his house in the Victor's Village, a constant reminder that he was somehow gifted with the ability to save her. His sunshine girl still spins, the centre of his universe, his mate for life.
But it doesn't make things better. She's a changed girl now, her days in the house a cocoon that turned her to some strange sort of butterfly. Red still dances in her hair, her eyes still sharp green, her lips still taking his kiss. But she feels different. Harder. Angrier. Burning.
On the morning a Peacekeeper drops off his first envelope of Victor winnings, he takes it straight to town. Stumbles from the liquor he dripped into his coffee, the only way to drink it without the heat in his throat making him think of the smoke rising from his burning home, and right to the shops.
He goes to her with a new dress, silky and bright orange, a gold necklace, a bright blue scarf. Pretty things, lovely things, the sort of thing he's never been able to buy her.
But her mouth flattens when she sees the bundle, and the booze makes him bolshy, has him snapping, "You like beautiful things."
"I don't like silk dresses, or gold necklaces," she sneers, demonstratively rustling the dusty fabric of her overalls, baggy over parts of her that haven't softened since the poison. "Maybe I'm not the girl you're thinking of."
"What's that supposed to mean?" he asks, and she shakes her head and turns away.
They gloss past it. He doesn't know what to do besides that, the liquor softening the world. They've never fought before, him and his radiant girl. It's always been easy, and he longs to go back to it.
But it comes up again like a flood the night before his Victory Tour. The train will arrive for him in the morning, ready to steer him around the Districts, taking him to see the families of the tributes he left behind in the arena, the coffins jolting home on the trains.
She's lying in the crook of his arm in his bed. Snuck out to see him, tracing her fingers down the scar on his stomach and saying, "You don't have to go tomorrow."
"Yes I do-"
"We could run," she says quietly. "Or you could refuse. Stand still. The man who won't be moved. You don't have to dance to their tune."
"You're not strong enough to run," he says, and she bristles, eyes flashing. "And what would we live on?"
"We said all we needed was each other," she snaps, and he almost rolls his eyes. They start a circle, but she looks so angry he swallows his disdain.
"I can't," he says.
"You won't-"
"Fuck's sake, Lenore Dove, you almost died because I was defiant once," he snaps, and she jerks out of the cradle of his arm, her face full of anger, hurt, revulsion. "My ma. Sid. They're gone because I was a fool-"
"I didn't fall in love with a boy who danced for them," she snaps. "What happened to not letting them use our tears for their entertainment?"
"I don't want them to use your blood for it," he says shortly. "Fuck, Lenore Dove, you're all I have. Promise you won't do anything stupid."
"But-"
"Think it through," he says sharply, and she clenches up.
He falls asleep with her all elbows behind him, the mattress between them a yawning void. When he wakes, she isn't there, and he drinks his breakfast in silence, wondering when in the night she slipped out.
Liquor touches his tongue the moment he's downstairs, before anyone comes to ready him for the tour. Back to the scoundrel, back to the snarky remarks, back to everything he was six months ago. The boy lost to him now, somewhere between Louella's blood on the stones and the smoke in the sky.
Plutarch comes in all warmth, Effie a sweetness at his side, and Haymitch narrows his eyes at him, watching. The camera winks at him, eager, and oh how it loves when Lenore Dove approaches him in the square. Orange dress tangled around her lovely form, nails messily painted to match, gold necklace strung around her neck, hair held in a faded pink scarf. The overall effect is of a sunrise, the softest look, and her kiss feels like a momentary forgiveness, a promise.
Effie watches them misty-eyed, sighs, "Oh, young love," and Lenore Dove smiles and blushes, and he thinks for a moment he has his radiant girl back.
But when they get to the station the train is sprayed with a blatant orange NO CAPITOL. NO REAPING. NO HUNGER GAMES. Effie's jaw drops, long pink nails going to her mouth, and Haymitch looks for a Peacekeeper, his girl in handcuffs, so apoplectically and suddenly angry with her for being so stupid.
Plutarch just raises an eyebrow, observes, "Catchy," and sweeps them to the bakery to wait for the train to be wiped down. Haymitch watches the street frantically, wishing he could call Lenore Dove, until the Peacekeepers report that the cameras caught nothing, that they're too old and it was too dark, that the wires froze and the picture blurred.
Effie nudges Plutarch, and Haymitch watches a soft-lit love story on their faces, in their eyes, as she says, "You should mention to President Snow there needs to be surveillance upgrades. What if someone sabotaged our train?"
"We will inspect it, ma'am," the Peacekeeper says, and Plutarch nods, putting a hand gently over Effie's.
She calms, glowing in his direction, and Haymitch shreds his pastry into confetti, thinking of how Lenore Dove used to shine at him like that, like a star that shone only for him.
They're on the train within the hour, after it's scrubbed clean and deemed safe, and he loses himself in the gilded offerings at the bar. Catches himself a crumpled heap in a common area, listening to Effie giggling in the corridor, the sounds of kissing.
On their first stop, Plutarch sneaks him away from the crowds, into the eaves of the building. Somewhere among their conversation, the pretty words of a man who had him lose almost everything, Haymitch says, "She's going to get herself killed."
"She's a spitfire," Plutarch observes, almost joyfully. "What an interesting cog in the machine of revolution she'd make."
"You stay away from her," he snaps, swaying on his booze-soaked feet, and Plutarch just smiles.
"Hardly the way to speak to the man who saved her life," he says, and reality crashes back in for a second. "Haymitch, who did you think left those tablets in your pocket?"
"I-"
"I thought Snow might try something like that," Plutarch says, hands tucked casually into his pockets. "Though I sincerely apologise for the fire. I didn't imagine he would try that."
"But-"
"Your girl is still a target, Haymitch," he says, and Haymitch nods. "Don't do anything stupid. Don't let her do anything stupid either."
"She doesn't listen-"
"Make her."
"So what do we do now?" he asks.
"We wait," Plutarch says, and walks straight past him, back down into the crowds.
The days roll into each other, smoothed out by the alcohol. Mornings mean a pounding head, mean Effie tutting while she pours orange juice down his throat, mean Plutarch watching him. Every district is a new bloom of dead tributes' faces on the screens, their devastated families, the memory of the ones he killed.
He calls Lenore Dove from District 3 for her birthday, after a short speech and studiously avoiding Beetee's eyes in the crowd. Though the booze tempted him, shining bottles on the bar, he stayed his hand so she wouldn't hear him slurring, so a kindness wouldn't turn quickly to a fight.
"Haymitch?"
"Happy birthday, my love," he says warmly, trying to picture her. His rare and radiant girl, in the meadow, the way she always looked in his dreams in the games, her faded overalls and rainbow scraps, her sweet smile with a goose's head in her lap.
"Where are you?"
"District 3," he says. "We're staying the night before we keep going. Train needs refuelling."
"Speaking of the train-"
"It's fast," he says sharply, cutting her off. No doubt the line is recorded, Snow watching from every angle. Like being in a snowglobe, his hand ready to shake everything down. "So I'll be home with you soon."
"I hope so," she says, and he wonders how little warmth there can be between them.
"What did you do today?"
"Mayor Allister invited me over," she says, and he perks up. "Gave me a meal. Said I could play piano for a while."
"That's good-"
"I can't play," she says. Her voice small, sad. Hollow. "I tried, I just...my fingers wouldn't work. They won't play right anymore."
"My love-"
"I can't sing, I can't play," she says. Resigned. "What sort of songbird am I now?"
A Peacekeeper emerges from the security compartment on the train, and Haymitch says, "We can talk about this when I'm home. You're still my songbird, my love."
"I love you," she says, fragile as glass.
"I love you too," he says, and hangs up the phone. His fingers rest against the cradle for a moment, trying to imagine Lenore Dove.
Even in his dreams, her radiance dims, no matter how hard he tries to keep her bright.
She watches from the window while Tam Amber shovels snow from their pathways, scraping off the evil glitter of ice from the stones. Her geese follow him around, honking curiously, pecking at his pockets for treats, and she wishes herself through the glass, into the cold. Flying away, up into the sky, a long way from anything Snow might see.
"Lenore Dove!" Clerk Carmine bellows up the stairs, and she slips down from her window seat, pulling at the sleeves of her sweater. "Are you watching the news?"
She brushes a speck of dust from the front of her sweater and slips downstairs, pulling up her wrinkled socks. They were a birthday present from Ember, in a dove grey to match her colour, and her aunt smiles at her from the armchair where she's ensconced herself, knitting something yellow.
Mason beams at her from the couch, him and Clerk Carmine a tender knot, slides her a sticky bun from the bakery and a coffee. She tucks her feet beneath her faded yellow skirt, fingers tracing through the embroidered flowers along the hem, and tries to ignore how Clerk Carmine immediately tuts when Haymitch's coverage blooms onto the screen.
"Honey, stop it," Mason admonishes, and winks at Lenore Dove.
She watches her boy move through the camera, trying to remember the name of the man filming. Surely Haymitch has mentioned it. But it doesn't come, as she loses herself in seeing him in every district, the slow careful speeches. His flintstriker at his neck, snake and mockingjay facing off across his collarbones, a sight to set a flame sparking in her chest. Maybe he's still the boy she raised three fingers to from the hill over the train tracks.
But she hears the slur in his voice in the districts closer to the Capitol, sees him stumble and catch himself on that silly escort woman, and her hackles rise.
The footage slides seamlessly from recorded to live, Caesar Flickerman in a glittering black wig, his eyebrows dyed to match. Haymitch sits on the velvet couch opposite him, dressed in a blazer the gold of champagne, bubbles picked out in a pale pattern, just as Tam Amber slips inside, stamping the snow from his boots and curling himself around Ember.
"Ladies and gentleman, your Victor of the 50th Annual Hunger Games!" Caesar shouts, gesturing happily to Haymitch, and the crowd roars.
Warmth bubbles up in her chest, her fingers woven through the shining chain of the necklace he gave her, and she's proud to call him hers. As he runs a hand through his too-long curls, victor crown a shining circlet, and smiles winningly at the crowd. "Happy to be here, Caesar," he says, and Caesar laughs, too-white teeth gleaming.
"So, scoundrel, how goes the bootlegging?" he asks, and Haymitch grins.
"Well, I don't need to do it now I have winnings," he says, and the audience go into a rapture.
He has them in the palm of his hand, and Lenore Dove watches him, trading barbs back and forth with Caesar. Her boy. The boy who came back to her, found her in this life and not the next.
But Caesar leans back and declares, "Let's watch some highlights, shall we?!" The crowd roars, and she watches the lights flicker on Haymitch's frozen face.
She sees all the moments that she only caught flashes of. The children who always seemed to find him, all dying in front of him. Her fingers clench so hard into her sticky bun it breaks apart when she sees all the moments highlight between Haymitch and Maysilee, the two of them moving like allies. Her gold necklaces covered in blood when she died, eerily similar to the one now around Lenore Dove's neck.
An urge rises to rip it off, break the clasp, but she just grips it tighter, as the screen cuts back to Haymitch on the couch. "My boy, may I ask a personal question?" Caesar asks, and Haymitch nods. "You and Miss Donner-"
"My sister," he says immediately. Too immediately. Lenore Dove bristles in her seat, feels her uncles looking at her, and tosses her hair, straightening up. "I got a girl at home, Caesar."
"Oh, so you do, silly me," Caesar says, and the screens cut to the footage of them before he left. Her dress is so bright on the camera, and when they kiss they look happy. Blissful. Love's young dream, if the way the Capitol crowd sigh is anything to judge by. "What's her name, scoundrel?"
"Lenore Dove," Haymitch says, and his voice softens over her name, and in that moment she could forgive him anything.
"She was waiting for you?" Caesar asks, and Haymitch nods. "How lovely. Hold onto that, young man. It's once in a lifetime."
"Aren't you mid-divorce, Caesar?" Haymitch asks, and the crowd roars with laughter. Some even rocking back and forth, drumming their feet against the floor, and Lenore Dove rolls her eyes at their dramatics.
"I didn't say when the lifetime starts, young man," Caesar says, his eyes sparkling, and Haymitch grins. "Your scoundrel, ladies and gentlemen!"
"He comes off well," Ember observes, tucked into Tam Amber's chest. "They like him. Maybe that will protect him."
"From what?" Lenore Dove snaps, and they all look at her with ghosts in their eyes, their faces. "I'm going upstairs. He said he'd call."
"Young lady-"
"Lenore Dove-"
"I'm fine," she snaps at her uncles, storms upstairs and waits on the mattress for his call.
It's almost morning by the time she decides to give up on him and bury her head in the pillow, trying not to think about golden Capitol girls putting their hands on their scoundrel.
When he stumbles off the train from his Victory Tour, drunk from emptying the bar, the first thing he sees is blonde hair held up in a pink ribbon, a hand holding a sweetshop bag, and he gasps, "Maysilee."
Her eyes swim into focus, the wrong shade of blue, closer to summer sky than deep water. Not Maysilee. Merrilee, her pink skirts crumpled, her face thinner than it used to be, holding out a bag of soft marshmallows.
"Fresh this morning," she says softly, her voice so heavy with sadness. "Happy homecoming."
She turns away from him, her hips swaying away, and he turns his head to find Lenore Dove waiting for him. A thick coat wrapped around her, and fire in her eyes. He tucks the bag into his pocket, walks up to her, and reaches for her hands, a, "My love," already on his lips.
Her hands jerk back from his, a dark eyebrow lifting, and she snaps, "Why did you talk to her first?"
"Lenore Dove...come on, I just got home," he says, pulls her closer again.
"You smell like the Hob," she says, but he bends his head and kisses her, her lips soft and honeyed.
"Have you been to the bakery?" he asks, and she stares up at him, eyes hard and defiant. "My love, I'm sorry. The tour was...it stirred up some memories."
"...I got you a cheese twist," she says, and he grins down at her, and when he kisses her again she at least kisses back.
She stays the night with him, tucked against his back, her breath on the back of his neck, and he tugs her arm over his side and laces their fingers together, so tight no one could drag them apart. Lying in the dark, he wonders if he should tell her about the Capitol girls, about their laughter and their bubbly flirtation, about champagne glasses tangled in slender fingers and cloying perfume when they stepped close to him.
But they're happy, and he doesn't want it gone. He wants who she is in the sunrise, soft and backlit in his arms, the sunlight through the window picking out the sparks of red in her hair.
He touches the necklace he gave her, simple gold chain, kisses softly above it, just beneath her ear. Her hand grips his shoulder, and she says, "You still smell terrible. Go shower."
"Join me," he whispers, nosing at the shell of her ear. The Capitol thinks they're love's young dream. They looked it in Plutarch's footage, his suit and her dress, their curls tangling when they pressed their foreheads close.
He wants one thing to be simple. She has always been spelled out for him, the girl in the tree. His rare and radiant girl. It was supposed to be them.
She smiles, and follows him to the bathroom, sinking her fingers into his hair to wash it, her eyes bright. They make love against the slick tiles, the first time since he came home from the games, the first time since the poison, and he presses all of his hopes that they can come out of this into her.
While she's eating breakfast, pulling apart her pastry, he watches her fingers work, and finally says, "Move in with me."
She glances up at him, and says, "Haymitch-"
"I don't like being here alone," he says, and she sighs.
"So leave. Move in with me."
"Sure, because Clerk Carmine would love that-"
"You don't have to stay here-"
"Yes, I do," he says, undercurrent of urgency. "I have to be their victor, Lenore Dove. Their scoundrel."
"Why?" she snaps, and he kicks himself for shattering their perfectly pleasant morning. "You don't have to do this...this song and dance for them."
"I am trying to keep myself safe," he says. "To keep you safe. I step out of line, and Snow will go after me, do you understand that?"
"Of course I understand that, I'm the one who was poisoned!" she snaps, and when she sets down her plate he sees that her hands are shaking. "I'm the one who can't sing or play my instruments any more! I'm the one who doesn't even know what's wrong with me after that got into me!"
"Come to the Capitol with me, maybe a doctor can see-"
"I don't want shit from the Capitol," she snaps, and he sighs, leaning back against the counter. Pleasant morning over.
"I'm sorry," he says, and she looks up at him narrow-eyed. "It's a nice house, Lenore Dove. We could have a nice life."
"Built on the back of the games," she snarls, and he sees red.
"I wouldn't even have gone to the games if it wasn't for you!" he snaps. "I was protecting you! Because you didn't think it through, you never think things through-"
"I won't apologise for trying to help," she says defiantly, and how is he supposed to say anything against that.
He pulls his coat around his shoulders and storms out, down the icy road into town. Snow silvers the grass, the square slick with frost, and he watches Otho through the bakery window, back and forth to the bread oven. Hair falling in his broad, pleasant face, the boy he remembers speckled in Woodbine's blood, and he shakes himself out.
A hook in his gut drags him towards the sweetshop, Merrilee behind the counter. Her white apron with the shop's logo is tied neatly around her waist, a bow tied at her hip, her hair tied up in a white ribbon. Just like those on the bags of candy, and he shudders at the gumdrop display, moving on to something else.
"Do you need a recommendation?" Merrilee asks, her ponytail bouncing as she moves towards him, and he glances at her.
"What are your favourites?" he asks, and she smiles softly.
"Marshmallows," she says, tapping the same bag she gave him at the train station. Her face mists with sadness, and she says, "Maysilee liked the caramels best."
"I'm sorry about yesterday," he says softly.
"I'm sorry all I can do is remind everyone of her," she says, and he takes her arm gently in his.
Her skin is soft, faded freckles on her wrist, and he says, "Don't apologise for that. We should be reminded."
"I thought about dyeing my hair," she confides, tucking an errant gilded strand behind her ear. "Just...just so I can stop seeing her every time I look in the mirror."
"Don't," he says. "Look how bad it looks on some Capitolites." A small smile cracks across her mouth, and he adds, "Besides, your hair is a different shade of gold. Warmer."
"Really?" she asks, toying nervously with the bow of her apron. "May and I always thought no one else noticed."
"Your hair is warmer," he repeats, and she really does smile. "Your eyes too. And you have a smaller mouth. And two dimples."
She's shining up at him, and quietly asks, "You notice all of that?"
"I'm very observant," he says, and she lets out a breath of something like a laugh. "Actually, maybe you could recommend me something for Lenore Dove?"
Her name rattles through the moment, and Merrilee looks down, says, "I thought she liked the gumdrops."
"She's gone off them," he says, and Merrilee turns to the displays, consideration on her face.
A soft familiar smell hits him, and he turns towards a display. Soft purple sweets piled high in the containers, sugared violet scent, and he realises it's exactly how Maysilee smelled, the scent that hit him every time she tossed her hair, when they slept near each other on their night of alliance.
"Can I take some of those?" he asks, and Merrilee turns to him with a smile sweeter than anything surrounding them.
"On the house," she says, and when she slips back behind the counter he watches her hips for a second too long.
She clings tight to Haymitch between his tour and the next games. Tries to be his girl, the one the Capitol thinks she is. Supportive, sweet, well-dressed. There are so few partners to victors who ever make a splash in the public eye, mere footnotes in their appearances, small print of the news when Beetee Latier's wife has their second child. She has nothing to follow, no script.
And she longs for freedom. Not to be in the house with Haymitch sinking deeper into his bottle, watching him self-destruct. Unable to tug him back, no matter how hard she grips his shirts, how deep she sinks her nails into his back when he comes to her with that look in his eye.
Sometimes, no matter how deep inside her he is, she thinks that it isn't truly her he's fucking.
It was never meant to be this. Their love was supposed to be simple, beautiful. Young love maturing into a lifetime, like her uncles and their partners. Love like the sweet poems, tangled fingers and blooming flowers.
She runs into Burdock in the apothecary, trying to find something to ease the headaches Haymitch suffers every morning. They fought before she left, when she told him to put down the bottle and they would stop, and he snapped back that she just didn't understand.
She screamed back, "You're right, I don't," and walked out in a twirl of her skirt, and she doesn't want to know what she'll be going back to.
Burdock eyes her up and down, clears his throat, and says, "Your uncles are worried about you."
"Tell them I'm fine," she snaps, picking up a vial of ginger, neatly labelled as effective for headaches.
"I'm worried about you," he says, and she scoffs. "Lenore Dove, you shouldn't be living with him."
"I'm not," she says sharply.
"Tam Amber says you haven't been home properly in weeks," he says, pushing and pressing on an open wound. "Haymitch is...you can't help him."
"At least I'm trying," she snaps, folding her arms. "Where have you been? You're supposed to be his friend."
"Didn't he tell you?" he asks angrily. "He threw a rock at Asterid. It drew blood. She needed stitches."
"So you picked your merchant girl over him?" she asks angrily, and he shakes his head.
"He doesn't want us to choose him," he says, his voice heavy. "Lenore Dove, he's self-destructing. You're going to get taken down with him."
"I love him," she says stubbornly, and Burdock just sighs.
When he turns away from her, she buys the peppermint oil with money from Haymitch's latest envelope, rustling her skirt in the sunlight. Reaping Day is only a week away, and every hour it creeps closer she can feel Haymitch tightening, pulling away from her.
After she's visited the grocery store and the bakery, Otho slipping an extra pastry to her, she's weighed down. She's standing in the square, wondering how she can organise everything to carry it back to the Victor's Village effectively, when a shadow falls across her basket and she looks up at Blair.
"Need some help?" he asks, and she thins her mouth. "I'm going that way anyway."
"You are not, there's nothing past the Victor's Village-"
"Maybe I'm admiring the architecture," he says, and despite herself she smiles.
He takes the heaviest bags, plucks up a pastry threatening to tip out of the bakery bag and hands it to her. She takes it, walking alongside him, watching the sun on his eyelashes. The swing of his arms, his shirt tightening over his shoulders, and finally she asks, "Why are you helping me?"
"Well, LD, just because Haymitch is coping badly doesn't mean I'm not still your friend," he says, smiling sweetly at her. So simple. "You're a great girl, you know. Trying to stay with him."
"He doesn't half make it difficult-"
"He's stubborn," he says. "Always has been. You're stubborn too." He jogs the bag higher in his arms, and says, "He'll get better."
"Will he?"
"We gotta believe things will get better, LD," he says, precariously balancing the bag on his forearm to pat her shoulder. "He's got you. He loves you."
"I love him," she says, and wonders why it feels so urgent to say it.
Blair comes up into the house, and Haymitch is nowhere to be seen. She takes him into the kitchen, his face bright as he admires the shiny surfaces and glossy appliances. "You know how to work all of this?" he asks, setting her bag from the bakery down.
"Absolutely not," she says, and he grins. "But I'm a decent cook. Haymitch seems to like it. When he wants to eat."
"Maybe you can cook for me sometime," he says, and she smiles.
She hooks over her steps to get to the higher cupboards, reaching up to put away the packets of pasta, the jars of sauce. Anything to have Haymitch eat a little better, now that they have the money to do it.
The steps rattle, and she stumbles, and Blair darts forward to catch her. His hands around her waist, steadying her, lowering her to the kitchen tiles.
"What the hell?" She glances away, ignoring that she noticed the sprinkling of subtle freckles across Blair's nose, the pale scar that almost disappears into his eyebrow, and Haymitch is in the doorway. Shirtless, staring at them, his eyes flashing.
"Hey buddy," Blair says warmly.
Lenore Dove just stands there, watching Haymitch's eyes swivel between them, the way his mouth twists. "Blair helped with the bags," she says, and Blair nods.
The way Haymitch is looking at them, the jealousy obvious in the twist of his mouth, makes something like happiness sparkle into being in her chest.
It's the most emotion she's seen in him since his homecoming.
Not once during his next games does he display that same emotion. She kisses him goodbye before the Reaping, watches two tiny Seam kids swept away to die, searches the news for any glimpse of him. Scoundrel mask again, laughing with other victors, his eyes haunted.
Blair drops by to check on her, and maybe she does take his jacket. Maybe she does keep it. Maybe she is wearing it when Haymitch comes home with the coffins, the gold chain he gave her around her neck.
Maybe she does like the way he fucks her when there's jealousy in his face, the way he touches her like he's looking for someone else's fingerprints.
She finds a shirt in his suitcase when she looks for something to wash with a lipstick stain on the cuff.
That sex is also spectacular.
Sun rises on another Reaping, his eighteenth birthday, and he cross his fingers. If no name he loves is called, it will be over. He won't have to worry about mentoring any of his friends to their deaths, nor his Lenore Dove.
She sleeps next to him, bruise on her shoulder from his mouth. They fought again about her graffiti, after he walked home from the Hob and saw orange scribbles on the side of the sweetshop. Maybe it was the fact that it was the sweetshop that made him angrier, seeing Merrilee scrubbing paint from the wall, her soft face set.
Lenore Dove screamed back at him, about giving her freedom, about stopping the games, and when they stopped screaming they started kissing, made angry love on the kitchen floor. He carried her up the stairs, helped her into one of his shirts, kissed her forehead before they slept, and they moved on.
He slips out of bed and into the shower, and when she wakes they walk down to the Reaping hand in hand. When they have to slip away from each other, he tries not to bristle when she immediately goes to Blair's side.
From his seat on the stage, watching Effie and her gleaming new engagement ring pull names from the bowls, he catches Merrilee standing in the crowd. He sees her sink in relief when it's not her name, and something sharpens hot in his chest when Allium Undersee runs to hug her, when he buries his perfectly straight nose in those marshmallow-scented waves.
It's not Lenore Dove either. He looks at her second, among families collapsing in relief that their children are safe from ever going. Her eyes flash in the sunlight, her new red dress coaxed tight to her figure, and he flares up when Blair hugs her.
Effie rambles about wedding planning any time there's even a fraction of silence, admiring the enormous pink jewel of her engagement ring. Plutarch has been promoted now, left District 12, but he visits. Significant looks at Haymitch, and kisses for Effie, her smiles and squeals. It's pure joy, and when he watches it an idea takes root in him.
His tributes die early, like always, leaving him in the Capitol with nothing much to do. He wanders into the markets, fingers tracing over velvet table runners, and they all know he's a Victor, start calling out for his attention, eyeing each other when he hovers by the rings.
An orange jewel jumps out at him, the glow of flame. Like her graffiti, the spiky letters they fight about. And then somehow he's swapping money with the grinning vendor, a velvet box burning a hole in his pocket, and that night when he gets drunk with Chaff he says, "I'm gonna ask my girl to marry me."
Chaff just raises an eyebrow, and reaches across him to pour them both another drink. "Good luck, my friend," he says. "You'll need it."
The train rattles him home, coffins in their room, and when they get back to the district Effie kisses him on both cheeks, beaming at him. "Go get her," she says, and claps her hands together, the light reflecting on her ring blinding.
He walks home pondering, wondering whether he should make this beautiful. Romantic. He thinks about Effie's ramblings, about flowers and music and waiting champagne. He would bring the stars down for Lenore Dove, but there's not much in 12 that's beautiful.
She's waiting for him in the Victor's Village, hair loose, wearing one of his shirts. He stares at her for a moment, his radiant girl, and scoops her into a hug, breathing in the scent of her hair.
"I got you something," he says softly, and she drops back onto her heels.
"You know I don't want shit from the Capitol," she says, and he sighs into her hair. "What, Haymitch, you do know that. I like my pretty with a purpose."
"It has a purpose," he says, and slips the box from his pocket. He goes unsteadily to one knee, right there by the ash-filled fireplace, and gives her a tremulous smile. "Its purpose is a promise. From me to you. That I will find you in every poem and every colour. That we mate for life. That I love you like all-fire, forever."
"Haymitch-"
"Lenore Dove Baird, will you marry me?" he asks quietly.
The silence between them takes a beat too long. He looks up from the ring, into her face. Her eyes, green as the emeralds he rejected for not being enough like her. He chose orange for a reason, one he hopes she sees. Orange like sunrise, like the one they watched in the spring before he was Reaped, from the meadow after they first made love, her head on his chest. When they were perfect.
He breathes again when she slowly extends her hand, and quietly says, "Yes."
Wedding planning happens so fast. He can feel that her uncles are angry he didn't ask, that they don't want this to happen, but he knows they would never truly deny Lenore Dove anything. He has that in common with them. Lenore Dove picks out her dress, hires it in the tradition of Seam brides, chooses the flowers for her hair. The bakery offers to make their cake, the bread for their Toasting, and for a moment everything seems like it might be okay. This was what they needed.
The morning before the wedding, a vast display of white roses appears on their doorstep. He knows who it must be from, the cloying smell making him dizzy, but still picks up the card, the elegant handwriting and reads Congratulations, Mr. Abernathy. May your bird never fly from you - President C. Snow.
He whips his hand back so hastily one of the thorns scratches him, a thin line of blood welling up against his skin. All he can smell is roses, the ink from Snow's pen somehow still wet, smearing across his palm. Or is it a hallucination, the booze, the crushing weight of it all. The knowing that they're being watched, that even being finally free of the Reaping isn't enough, that they will always be watched, that every time Lenore Dove argues she's putting them in danger, that at any moment Snow could step in and make his rare and radiant girl disappear.
It's all too much, and he runs from it. Tripping over the roses, petals flying, more thorns scratching his wrist, his elbow, his face. His shoes slip on the frozen ground, taking him somewhere safe, anywhere safe, and he knows before he looks up that when he stops he'll find himself at the sweetshop.
He knows it's Merrilee's shift, her timings having somehow worked themselves into his memory. She looks up at him, immediately moves towards him, cupping her hand to his cheek. "Breathe, Haymitch," she says softly. "Hey, let me lock the door. I'll tell Dad the power went fuzzy."
"Don't let go," he pleads, his breath caged in his lungs. Every bone feels too tight, his skin tearing, and the only grounding is her hand on his jaw.
"I won't," she promises, and reaches for the door, flipping the sign to CLOSED. She moves closer to him then, untying her apron, and he slumps into hugging her, burying his nose in her hair.
The sweet, soft scent of marshmallows finally chases away the cloying smell of those roses. He looks down at her, her chin lifted high to look him in the eyes, the gentle concern on her face, and it's pure instinct, pure need, to bend his head and kiss her.
She tastes of marshmallows too.
She kisses him back, her lips so soft, sliding her hand up into his hair. Taking a fistful of curls, pulling, and he growls against her mouth and presses her back against the wall of containers, a thud and a rattle as something spills across the floor. He gives as good as he gets, licking into her mouth, still tasting sweetness, her moan caught delicious between their lips.
Something else falls, and she breaks the kiss, hisses, "My father will kill me for wasting stock."
"I'll pay," he breathes, and kisses her again. She's addicting, the sweet smell of her hair and her skin, the taste of her mouth. Her kisses start delicate, sugar-spun, but as their bodies seal together against the shelves she gets bolder, hotter, and sometimes the marshmallow scent changes to sugared violets.
Her hands slide down his back, his grip tightening on her thighs, and she breaks the kiss again, gasping, "Haymitch, you're engaged."
"So stop me," he whispers, nosing at her neck, feeling the frantic flutter of her pulse. "Stop me, Merrilee. Because I don't think I can stop myself."
She stares at him, and with her eyes dark with arousal they're closer to Maysilee's shade.
Her legs untangle from around him, and he's ready to shelve it, to place this memory in a drawer and try to forget it. But then she slips her fingers between the buttons of his shirt, yanks him behind the counter and into the backrooms. An office, a desk, and she lifts herself neatly onto it and pulls him into another kiss.
He presses his hips to hers, grinds hard and swallows her moan. She's flushed, gorgeous, chest heaving out of her dress, and she quietly says, "I've never done this before."
"I have," he breathes, and kisses her again, pushing up her skirt. He's torn between savouring it, the slow reveal of stunningly flushed skin, and getting it done quickly before the guilt sets in.
But he'll feel guilty either way, so he chooses to enjoy it. To slip his hand up her skirt and feel how wet she is, feel the soft, hot give of her when he slides a finger into her. Her hand back in his hair, yanking him hard back to her lips, though it's less of a kiss and more eager aching contact, her moans hot against his mouth. When he crooks his fingers, her whole body jolts, and she hisses, "Fuck, Haymitch-"
He could absolve himself of guilt by only using his hands, telling himself it doesn't count if he only kissed her, if he only felt the way she tightened around his finger. But she pleads so prettily, rocking her hips against his, reaching for his belt. And he's so hard his head is spinning, so hard that when she frees his cock from his trousers he's already leaking, her slim thighs a perfect cradle when she opens them.
Her eyes roll back when he presses into her, the hot eager clamp of her body drawing a strangled moan from him, his teeth meeting her neck when she tugs on his hair as he sinks every inch in. She yields so perfectly for him, stunningly wet, and she gasps in a lungful of desperate air and asks, "Is this about me, Haymitch? Or her?"
"You," he promises, lifts his head to look into her eyes. They're dark with need, her pupils blown, and he looks down between them as he rocks his hips, watching his cock drive in and out of her. When he meets her eyes, she's bright with need, flushed down beneath the neckline of her dress, and he pulls it down, presses his mouth to her breast, her body jolting into it.
"I've dreamed of this," she whispers, and he lifts his head and kisses her as he starts to fuck her properly. Hard and desperate, her dress pulled down so he can roughly palm her nipples, her breasts bouncing. She moans his name on every thrust, unbuttons his shirt to caress his chest, pulls him closer until their bones slot together.
When she breaks, she near-screams his name, tightening around him. She's beautiful, soft and spread on the desk, a moan spiking out of her every time his hips move. He tries to be gentle, but she looks at him with her lips swollen with kissing, and says, "Fuck me hard, Haymitch."
He comes less than a minute of thrusting later, her moan answering his, buries his face in her neck. She smells so sweet still, yanking her dress back up to cover her breasts, panting into his hair. Her hands slide gently down his back, so soft, and she asks, "Do you feel better?"
"Yeah," he pants, and lifts his head from her neck. He lets his eyes roam her face, the bright pink in her cheeks, and says, "You didn't stop me."
"I didn't want you to stop," she says, and pulls him into another lingering kiss. "Did you want to stop?"
"No," he says quietly, and kisses her again, tangled around her in the gloom of the office.
Once he's pulled out of her, once he's wiped himself down with a handful of logoed napkins and rebuttoned his trousers, she makes him a coffee and they sit down on the floor behind the counter. Hidden from people walking by.
"What happened?" she asks, while he's still watching her stir sugar into her coffee.
"Snow sent roses," he says, and she blinks. "I can't explain. But...you know, he smells like them? And I'm terrified of him. It got to me."
"And you came here?" she asks, and he nods. "Why?"
"...You're safe," he says, and she smiles.
"I don't know if I am," she says, nudging his leg with her foot. "I'm not your fiancée."
"She's not safe," he says, and Merrilee's eyebrow arches. "I mean...she's a force of nature, my girl. Rare and radiant. It's part of who she is, to not be entirely safe. It's why I love her."
She watches him, and smiles. "You know your eyes go bright when you talk about her?" she asks, and he chuckles into his mug. "Have you just fucked it all up by fucking me?"
"Maybe it's what's best for her," he says. "These days I feel like a natural disaster. No one will survive."
"I'm alive," she says, blushing face and beating heart. "And that's very arrogant, you know. To assume you can hurt everyone that much. We all have our own natural disasters."
"I assume I'll kill them, not hurt them," he says, and she shakes her head. "I'm a Victor, Merrilee. You know that means I'm a killer."
"It means they made you a killer, not that you are one," she says, and takes a sip of her coffee. Blue eyes bore into him, and she says, "The best thing you can do is live a life in spite of it, you know? Defy expectations. Paint a good poster."
"You sound like Maysilee," he says without thinking.
Momentary grief lacerates her face, but she gives him a tremulous smile. "We are twins," she says, and drains her mug. "I really should unlock the door. Dad will have my head."
He gets to his feet, and takes his mug to go. She kisses him on the cheek as she unlocks the door to let him out, and he looks back at her behind the frosted glass. Calm. Soft. Easy.
The streets are quiet and slick walking home, and he turns it over in his head. Moves past the burning memories of Merrilee's moans, into the consequences of his actions. Lenore Dove will surely leave him. The drinking and the arguing wasn't enough, so he did something he couldn't take back. No papering over this with an apology. No hiding that he came inside another woman, that he knows the sound of her coming, that he had another name on his lips.
He gets home, and there are no more roses on the doorstep. When he opens the door, he smells floral smoke, and finds Lenore Dove in the living room, methodically sprinkling shredded petals into the flames. They shine in her eyes, the room thick with the cloying scent, and he watches her for just a moment. One last lovely scene.
Then he cuts through it with a sharp, "I had sex with Merrilee Donner."
She knew it was coming. Knew the second she came home and he wasn't there, knew the moment she saw the roses on the doorstep and the note. The first thing she burned.
It still breaks her heart. An exquisite, perfect break. Right down the centre.
And yet, it doesn't hurt. It doesn't latch onto her bones and catch in her breath. Not the way it did when she saw the footage of him looking at Maysilee like that, the unspoken story, the potential.
"Did you?" she asks, not daring to look at him.
"I did," he says. "It was good. Great. Spectacular."
"Who did you think about?" she asks. This could be the answer that breaks her heart. "Was it about Maysilee?"
"It was about Merrilee," he says, and she's grateful he's straightforward. They're getting married in the morning. She can't marry a man who won't be direct with her. "You can go home. Tell your uncles they were right about me."
"I am home," she says. Gets neatly to her feet and turns to him. He doesn't look like he's had sex, at least. No teeth marks from another woman on him. She can live with that. "I'm not leaving you, Haymitch."
"But...I cheated on you," he says. "The day before our wedding. I went and fucked another woman. I...I made her scream my name."
That sends something of a frisson through her, and she moves closer to him. When she kisses him, she can taste a new sweetness on his lips, and he still chases her when she pulls back and drops to her heels.
"You love me?" she asks.
"Like all-fire," he promises, and she just smiles.
She slips off her engagement ring and tucks it into his sweat-slick palm, reaches up to pat his cheek. "The wedding is still on, my love," she says. "I'll be back in a few hours."
"Where are you going?" he asks, turning to watch her, and she takes his sweater from where he left it crumpled on the floor, pulling it down over her hips.
"To make someone scream my name," she says sweetly, and walks out of the house, on a determined walk into the Seam.
Her anger roils inside her, but she tamps it down to keep her warm. There's still so much love in her, no severing of anything, no sudden snap. She loves him, the sweetheart of a boy he was before and the mess of a man he is now, and no amount of self-sabotaging could make her leave him to drown. Not when their all-fire is enough to keep them both warm.
She wore wrong shoes for the snow, the frost touching through her boots, and she turns the corner to the Hawthornes' house. Ramshackle and tumbledown, like all the other houses in the Seam, like hers, the place where she lay her head. The place she's left behind for Haymitch, for the boy who gave her a ring and promise and a plea. For her firestarter.
When Blair answers the door, hair falling in his eyes, she glances behind him and asks, "Are you alone?"
"Yeah," he says, and squints into the street behind her. "Where's Haymitch?"
"At home," she says, and steps into the house, closing the door behind her. She looks at him, his knuckles pale on the door, taking just a little too long to let go of the handle, and she swallows and says, "How long have you had a crush on me?"
He goes wide-eyed, scrubs a hand over the back of his hair, and says, "I guess since Burd brought you to come hang out in the square that one summer. LD, you know you're beautiful." He frowns, moves closer, and asks, "Doesn't Haymitch tell you?"
"Of course he does," she says, and steps closer. He smells like the trees, like the forest, so fresh and green and bright, different to Haymitch. No burn of alcohol, no faint tinge of ash, no burnt out smell that comes with being a firestarter smoked out.
She reaches up to kiss him, his lips soft against hers. His hand curves to the small of her back, holding her a little closer, and when he breaks away he takes her left hand gently from his cheek, looks and quietly says, "You're not wearing your ring. The wedding-"
"Is still on," she breathes, and kisses him again, wondering at all the ways his kisses aren't like Haymitch's.
"But-"
"Let me worry about him," she whispers, and guilt splashes obvious across his face. "Hey. You're a nice boy. So be nice to me."
She takes his hand and lifts it to her breasts, just like she does with Haymitch.
And, just like it does with Haymitch, any protest melts into the next kiss, and she's turning away to pull him up the stairs, towards a bedroom she's been in before, kicking her legs and reading her book while the boys talked nonsense.
He's gorgeously gentle, reverent, undressing her like she's precious. Touching her so sweetly, and it's simple. Easy to end up on top of him in his narrow bed, her feather-light finger tracing down the buttons of his shirt, flicking each one open.
She settles in the cradle of his hips, his eyes focused wholly on her, and he quietly asks, "Why me?"
"You're nice," she says simply, and sinks her hips down into his, watching his face flood with colour, losing herself to the press of him inside her.
She gives herself over to him, the way he looks up at her in awe, his hands hooked to her hips. The nice boy, the one who always met the background a little, the kind one. She knows him, well as she knows anybody. The first to her side when she was poisoned, the one who brought her bread. Maybe in another life, she would've been his.
Maybe, somewhere else, nice was enough for her.
When she leans forward to kiss him, he groans so beautifully, and she presses her forehead to his and breathes, "Come inside me."
"But-"
"Blair, do it," she says, voice tight with arousal, with need, and presses her mouth to his shoulder, digging her teeth into him. He's delicious, a ripe fruit of a boy, fully formed on the vine.
His hand slips between her thighs, down the flat plane of her stomach, and he touches her so gently that she has to beg for harder. He smiles when her breath skips, cradling her hip so sweetly in the heat of his palm, and says, "You're lovely, LD."
Something so sweet and simple sends her over the edge, his fingers playing her through it, her moans the closest she can get to a song these days. She stays on top of him, cradled in him, rocking into him until his face twists up in ecstasy and he presses his face to her shoulder.
His breath comes in jagged rushes against her skin, and she holds him for a second. A small slice of the world, a short little poem for the two of them. When he lifts his head, he tucks an errant flame-tinged curl behind her ear, and quietly asks, "You okay?"
"I'm okay," she says, and slips out of his lap. He stays in his bed, watching her intently, while she slips back into her dress, tidying her hair, checking her hips for his fingerprints.
"LD...about Haymitch-"
"I love him," she says, and nothing in her mouth has ever felt so right. "That doesn't change. Ever."
"It's going to make you happy?" he asks. "Marrying him?"
"More than it would to not do it," she says, flexing her hand. Feeling the missing weight of her engagement ring. Thinking about it on her hand, bright as a spark, a caged sunrise. She misses it.
"LD, I care about you," Blair says, and she watches him pull his trousers up, the sleekness of his chest, his arms. "I care about him too. I just...I want you both to be happy."
"He won't survive without me," she says softly. "And I won't survive without him. He's...he's my Haymitch."
"I know," he says, and they stand caught in each other's eyes for a moment. Then he gives her a soft smile, and steps close to kiss her upturned nose. "You still want me at the wedding?"
"I do," she says, and his eyes sparkle into hers.
"You're going to be the most beautiful bride," he says, and she smiles sweetly back at him. Steps into his shadow and kisses him softly, another life in the gentleness of his face.
But not the life she wants. So she leaves the house, walks back to the Victor's Village, and when she opens the door to their home she hears the chink of glass on glass. Takes her time unravelling her layers, ruffling her hair up in the mirror by the door, inspecting her neck for any sign of bruises from Blair's mouth.
Haymitch is sprawled at the kitchen table, and she watches him. Her man, her fiancé, dark curls spilling over his collar, stubble peppering his jaw. She wonders when he suddenly became a man in front of her, if this was who was reborn from the ash for her. This is what came back to her.
He looks up at her, his grey eyes storm-dark, and lifts his hand from his glass. Her engagement ring is pushed as far as it will go onto his pinky finger, like the fancy rings the Capitol families wear, and he nods. "You came back," he says, and she smiles.
"I wanted to," she says, the air stretching taut between them, shimmering with something. She can't tell what it is. Grief, or anger, or love. Maybe it's everything. Maybe they're everything.
"Why?" He loops his fingers around his glass, takes a drink, and she watches the stretch of his fingers, the motion of his throat, the lowering of his brows over the eyes she fell in love with.
"I don't want to leave," she says, the easiest thing to say.
"Maybe you should," he says. "What kind of man cheats the day before his wedding?"
"What kind of woman does?" she asks, and his face darkens. Tightens. She moves towards him, leans against the table next to him, and he watches her lift his glass to her mouth, fitting her lips to the imprint of his to take a sip.
It burns her mouth, fire in her chest, and she watches him watch her. His hand slowly reaches for hers, fingers sliding against hers when he takes his glass back, and he says, "I don't want to drag you down with me."
"You're not," she says. "Maybe I'm not perfect, Haymitch. Have you considered that?"
"You're my rare and radiant girl-"
"Nowhere in my poem does it say that the girl is perfect," she says. "Maybe that's why he can't forget his lost Lenore. Because she was less than perfect. Because she fascinated him."
"I'm still less than you deserve," he says, and she smiles.
"It's not about deserving," she says quietly. "I want to give you everything. If you're bad, let me be bad with you."
He meets her eyes, and a curling smirk silks across his lips, sending heat shivering down her spine. "Who was it?" he asks, and she smiles archly.
"You know," she breathes, takes his hand and brings it beneath her skirt.
"You liked it?" he asks, his words roughening, need darkening his eyes.
"I did," she whispers, dragging her fingers through his curls, her nails sharp against his scalp, the way he likes.
"Tell me," he breathes.
She smirks at him, lets him pull her into his lap, and asks, "Do you like that? You like being jealous?"
"I like that you came back to me anyway," he says, pulling her skirt up.
She sees the feral flash in his eyes when he slips his hand between her thighs and finds her still damp, still sticky, brushes her thumb to the faint red mark on his neck and breathes, "Always."
"My girl," he groans, and she buries her face in his curls to muffle her moan when he slips inside her. The stretch, the burn, the sharp dig of his hipbones against her skin.
"Yours," she whispers, brings his hand to her mouth and kisses his knuckles. Presses her mouth to where his wedding ring will be in the morning, his eyes dark watching her. She's never seen a metal as precious as the shine in his eyes. "Mine."
"Yours," he promises, moving against her. "Mine."
He pulls her close, and they're out of the chair, away from the table, slamming back against the counter, frantic against each other. Sweat and salt and blood, fire burning between them.
Maybe they were the flintstriker, all along. Setting things alight.
Maybe no one will survive this.
But she doesn't want to live without him burning next to her. Let them spiral to ash. She'll find all the kindling she can and keep the flame lit. Start the fire again every time it burns out.
She's not sure if she comes because he slips her engagement ring back onto her finger, or whether she was tipping over the edge anyway.
He follows her from the cliff, and she can almost feel the wind whipping past her, cold knives against bare skin.
But they hold each other on the way down, no matter what awaits them, and she couldn't ask for anything more.