Chapter Text
She remembers the process in vague glimpses, never enough to become a burden. Truthfully, she could recall every moment of dread when the deal Katniss made was still uncertain, but perhaps it was better not to remember. The women in her family had always done the same, willfully erasing memories too sharp or spiky to bear.
And so she decides to let her old life slip away, already long lost. She ignores her furious mother, her raging father. She’s long been an adult, capable of managing well enough on her own. Heartbreakingly, she leaves all of Proserpina’s things behind, save for a rather tasteless gold-plated necklace.
Effie is ready to run the moment Plutarch calls with news that Paylor’s signature is on the pardon deal. President Paylor now—strange thought. But all her bags are packed, clothes folded neatly, farewells already given.
It seems only fair to flee as far as possible for a former escort, dangerously low on funds and apparently even lower on self-preservation. Maybe what happened in the cell did something to her, but she refuses to think on it. What’s past should remain past.
The train ride is uneventful. Masses of people move district to district these days, searching for lost relatives, trading stories. The train stops at every district, and Effie’s seat on the wooden pallet is as uncomfortable as one might imagine, leaving her trousers creased and her back aching.
Still, she rides on—one day, then another. She snatches sleep curled between her bag and an old man whose smell can only be described as foul. She wakes when he hops off at Nine.
She realises, stepping onto the platform, that she doesn’t truly know what she came for. Ashes still cover everything, and though they’ve done their best, no one could clear away all the bones and ruined buildings. There’s nothing waiting for her here.
Except. Perhaps it was just a fevered dream she had underground, caged like an animal. But if it wasn’t a dream, then maybe.
Her bags are heavy. She’d left behind anything she thought wouldn’t pass as wearable in Twelve, but brought everything else she owned. As she walks through the desolate district, she silently thanks the moon and stars that she was never much of a reader. Books would have been a nightmare to carry.
Katniss lets her in, contempt in her posture and grief in her eyes. Effie tries to chatter about how well the Victors' Village looks despite everything, but Katniss silences her with a glare. She says nothing else.
The air is thicker in Twelve. The night is darker. Both feel fitting.
She mostly keeps herself busy wandering the district (Katniss calls it stupid), failing at cooking, and waiting—though she knows she shouldn’t. Three days crawl by before she sees Haymitch, so drunk he can barely stand, having a pee on his own porch. She swallows the urge to greet him; it would be pointless.
The next day, Plutarch calls to check on her. Katniss grabs the phone first and wails into it. Later, Plutarch admits mentioning her sister was a mistake. Effie agrees but merely hums.
Every day feels the same. Katniss sobs herself hollow and pretends no one else exists. Haymitch is either unconscious or drinking himself there. Effie buries herself in sewing repairs, patching Katniss’s jacket, altering dresses and trousers. It takes three days. Then she cleans the alleyway to Victor’s Village for a week, gloves ruined. She tackles tougher sewing tasks after, managing them despite the frustration.
Eventually, there is nothing left to do to keep the memories away. So she does the next best thing: pretends she’s forgotten. It’s laughably easy. Haymitch is so far gone he likely can’t tell up from down, and peeing on his porch has become routine. She refuses to burden him further.
Still, she finds herself watching his house too often, telling herself it’s just to check he’s breathing. He is—unfortunately. The quality of that life is no longer her business, so she lets it lie.
A problem arises in late spring with Peeta’s return. He still drifts through half-conscious, struggling to distinguish what’s real from what isn’t. He insists on staying alone in his house the first night—a bold move, as it turns out. The next day, Effie has already moved in, carrying all her things from Katniss’s place to his.
At least now her bedroom view isn’t of Haymitch’s porch. Instead, she has a boy screaming and thrashing in his sleep, waking in a panic, unsure of anything. But that, at least, is something Effie knows how to handle.
Spring fades into summer, and miraculously the grass turns green as the rains wash away the ash. Late-blooming flowers appear, and Peeta takes to picking them, leaving bunches on Katniss’s porch. Sometimes he leaves a small bouquet for Effie, too.
She learns she’s allergic to real flowers.
Despite the constant drizzle and overcast sky, a different drought settles over Twelve—far more dangerous, far more difficult to watch. Haymitch first ransacks Katniss’s cupboards, emerging with cough syrup and cloudy wound disinfectant, declaring them essential in these dry times. He stumbles into Peeta’s house next, rummaging without apology until he finds half a bottle of old liquor, which he clutches like treasure.
Effie knows too well what drought does to him: a week of sweating and shaking, followed by even deeper drinking to dull the aftermath.
The supply train doesn’t come that day, nor the next. So she does the only thing left—calls Plutarch. Bitter as it tastes, humiliating as it feels, she manages to get just enough alcohol into Twelve to keep Haymitch from losing his mind before the train arrives—late, but at last. Only then can she breathe.
It all keeps her busy for weeks, during which she becomes, quite expertly, someone who doesn’t think about any of it at all.
She studies herself in the mirror every day, sometimes twice. It’s a taxing exercise to trace the lines of her body and still recognise herself—harder still to accept what she sees.
She suspects she’s far too preoccupied with it. People in Twelve don’t seem to care nearly as much about appearances, especially now that there are more of them—not just the miserable four left in the Victor’s Village. Some faces she recognises from past Reapings, some are strangers, and some look far too well-fed to be locals (and those run away fast, faster than they arrive). But nobody seems to notice, or care, except her.
She notices everything: how her breasts have sagged, how her face wrinkles even at rest, how the dry rye bread and stale water diet has left her sharper-boned than ever.
She can’t decide if she likes these changes. On one hand, they mean she’s ageing, becoming even further from who she wants or needs to be. On the other, they prove the damage wasn’t permanent, that her body wasn’t fated to remain forever possessed and broken.
She should’ve brought a rejuvenation kit from the Capitol—just in case she hates the result. But it’s beneath her pride to ring Plutarch and beg him to send one on the next supply train.
It is late summer when Haymitch finally surfaces from his binge—longer than she remembers it ever lasting. In the past, he usually retained enough coherence to at least piece together what had happened over the past days or weeks. He couldn’t mark dates on a calendar, certainly not, but it was never quite this bad.
She notices he’s recovering because he stops urinating on the porch. Later, he even cracks open a window—living room, she thinks. She glimpses the filthy interior before he slams it shut again.
A knot twists in her stomach, tight and insistent. She reins herself in harder now, demanding composure and poise in this uncertain stretch of time.
Peeta says nothing, but she knows he knows—and suspects he knows that she knows, too. He’s doing better these days, less dazed in his waking hours.
One day, he bakes her a loaf of bread, which she accepts gratefully. They’re eating Katniss’s foul rabbit stew and Peeta’s bread when he finally says it.
“You’re different.” A simple statement, delivered lightly, but it hits her like a hammer blow to the gut.
She smiles politely. “I suppose you could say that,” which is perhaps the understatement of her life. But Peeta lets it lie. She shifts the conversation deftly away from herself—from the things she cannot, will not name. “You seem better lately.”
He nods. “I suppose you could say that,” he echoes, a faintly defiant smile tugging at his lips.
It’s not that she doesn’t care for Katniss, Effie thinks later that night, lying in bed. She likes both kids equally, no doubt. But Katniss makes it so difficult to care for her, that Effie has simply chosen Peeta as the easier one to manage. Frightened boys, she knows how to handle. Exhausted girls, apparently not.
It’s only fair, really. Peeta is hers. Katniss is Haymitch’s—and it is Katniss who finally rouses Haymitch enough to scrub the piss stains from the porch, shouting that she despises him.
If it works for now, Effie thinks, she can let Katniss’s language slide.
One night, she wakes with a start, feeling something warm and wet between her legs. For a few seconds, she knows—absolutely knows—that she must comply, and if she does, it won’t be as bad as it could be. Her hips move on their own, a habit learned long ago.
As she drifts closer to full consciousness, she realises she’s in her own bed, in Peeta’s house. Another moment passes, and she understands that the ragged breathing is only her own, no one there to hear or see. At last—though it feels like forever—she realises it’s only the monthly bleeding, not some mortal threat.
She thanks the stars and the moon for watching over her, for not letting her grow something innocent inside her when she was in that cell.
The flowers she’s most allergic to are precisely the ones Peeta brought home just hours ago. Since then, she’s been constantly sniffling and sneezing, eyes puffy and red, skin flushed. She ought to ask Plutarch for some medicine in the next shipment. For now, all she can do is endure it—she certainly won’t throw the flowers away—and occasionally retreat to the porch for a break from the sneezing fits.
It still rains, mostly. Katniss says Beetee told her it’s because of some sort of lingering radiation, now that the bombs and rockets are gone. She also claims Beetee said removing such things was merely a matter of controlled detonations. Effie finds it hard to believe radiation could make it rain for weeks on end, but it’s the only explanation on offer, and she’s grown used to accepting the inexplicable.
There are too many things like that. One of them: the reason Haymitch finally emerges from his house while she’s sitting on Peeta’s porch, escaping the flowers. It’s humid, which eases her symptoms slightly. He not only leaves his house, but after glancing left and right, crosses the alleyway in long, steady strides—a straight line, she notes, rather than the usual shambling excuse for walking.
He doesn’t ask what she’s doing. He merely huffs when he sees her, puffy-eyed and blotchy, and sits beside her.
She notices he doesn’t smell entirely foul—maybe that’s the fresh air, maybe he’s bathed. His clothes look relatively clean, his hair brushed just long enough ago that it’s beginning to tangle, but not yet matted.
“Long time no see,” he mutters eventually, after what feels like an eternity.
His syllables drag slightly, but he isn’t slurring, and he holds himself upright well enough. Funny, how she catalogues him into neat boxes in her mind. By those boxes, he’s in a decent state now. Decent enough to speak to, at least.
So, she smiles politely. “Welcome to you too,” she says, careful to pitch her voice just pointed enough.
“You’d think living next door would make it hard not to see each other, huh,” he grumbles.
She has nothing real to offer—she’s spent too long watching him out of the corner of her eye over the past months—so she nods, still smiling. “I have to agree. A curious turn of events.”
Haymitch shoots her a look. What it’s meant to be, she can’t quite decipher, but she returns it—the best look she has, all polite enthusiasm and feigned cluelessness. He turns away, eyes fixed on the horizon.
“Figure you’re staying?” he asks eventually, brushing a stray strand of hair back into place. Her stomach drops to the floor, gut twisting into a hard knot. She should stop thinking about stomachs and guts, really—every time she does, she remembers his Games far too vividly for comfort.
“That, we’ll see,” she says, breathing steadily through the thought of it. It doesn’t matter. Never did, never will. “But the Village looks quite good, all things considered.”
He lets out a harsh, ugly laugh that dies almost instantly. “Katniss said as much. Said you were amazed.”
“I was,” she replies.
And that’s all she gets.
It’s not exactly a job, what she does—she doesn’t get paid, and she’s not entirely sure money even means anything in Twelve anymore—but she keeps busy coordinating the supply trains.
It’s frustrating. The trains rarely carry enough supplies to scrape together a half-decent meal. They usually arrive late, which is not just irritating but dangerous.
She refuses to beg Plutarch for emergency liquor shipments ever again. She’s above that.
It gives her a small sense of belonging, a modest reparation. She still gets looks of unfiltered hatred when she comes too close to the ruins of the Hall of Justice—now just called The Hall. The word ‘Justice’ seems to frighten everyone these days, after so long of it meaning something selective and brutal.
Effie suspects she’s developed her own allergy to the word, though it’s hard to say.
There’s no mayor in Twelve now, not officially. She is the closest thing to a link with the Capitol, given her ties to Plutarch—and her upbringing.
So she manages the trains. Or tries to—results vary. More often than not, it ends with her humiliating herself further, calling every contact she can think of and begging for favours. But at least it’s not for liquor. And at least, one day, she hears that the railways might be repaired soon.
She also gets asked, every now and then, why she won’t just come back—but she never has an answer, so she disconnects these calls quickly. If anyone ever pressed her, she’d say it was simply a matter of poor District infrastructure.
With the somewhat steady flow of supplies, Twelve begins to come back to life—just a little. Repairs happen slowly but steadily. Sometimes she sees children running wild through the meadows, doing nothing in particular. Other times, a few new arrivals step off the train and settle wherever they can, piecing houses together from shattered bricks and some grey mixture she can’t quite identify.
She finds it gradually harder to ignore everything, especially as the days grow shorter and the nights stretch on. She doesn’t join Peeta in his night terrors and screaming, but she always wakes ragged, breathless, forehead clammy.
She figures there’s nothing to be done about it.
“Washed fresh,” she hears suddenly from behind her, the familiar mumble. “Don’t you worry. Stitching is a fucking nightmare.”
It’s late evening, and Peeta left for Katniss’s house about an hour ago, claiming he needed to drop something off—though he took nothing but a bunch of dried flowers and a hopeful smile. Effie figures things must be going well, as he hasn’t come back yet.
She jumps a little in her kitchen seat, not having heard Haymitch come in. But composure returns quickly, and she turns to see him holding a pair of trousers that look neither washed nor anything to not worry about.
She smiles regardless. “A ‘welcome’ is the minimum of good manners,” she says, voice dripping with sweetness. Too much so, perhaps, because he grimaces. She studies him a moment longer; indeed, she can see how badly his hands tremble—stitching would be impossible.
She bites back comment on that. Instead, “I gather I’m a seamstress now?”
He shrugs, half-hearted at best. “More than anyone else could be.”
She suspects he’s barely drunk, if at all. He always wore that particular look of discontent when he was sober—she remembers it well enough from the many times he tried, half-heartedly, to stay conscious for the final days of the Games, if their—his tributes made it that far.
She doesn’t like the look. She likes it just the same.
“They don’t look washed,” she says.
Another shrug. “They are. But,” he adds, a faint smirk tugging at his lips as he mock-inspects the trousers, “I can imagine what you’re on.”
“I can only hope it stays in the realm of imagination,” she replies with a polite smile. “But that is good fabric. Raw denim is excellent for district people, it’s—”
She stops mid-sentence. She is district people now, sewing raw denim instead of simply buying another tulle dress or feathered hat. Which she mostly hates. Raw denim had always been her least favourite—stiff, stubborn, impossible to manage. Good for working, never for looking good.
She supposes raw denim is the best she can hope for now.
Haymitch tosses the trousers onto the back of the other kitchen chair, convinced, apparently, that she’ll take the task on.
“Tss, into the wash first, please, thank you,” she says, almost reflexively. Perhaps he really did wash them, perhaps not. Once, she would have believed him without question—he was never the type to lie. Now, she isn’t sure what to make of him anymore.
He shrugs again, but sits on the same chair nonetheless. “They’re bickering,” he says, gesturing vaguely toward the house across the alley, barely visible save for one window. “Thought I’d come by. Didn’t want to disturb them.”
“Of course,” she replies smoothly. She can’t quite fathom how he would disturb them from his own house, but it isn’t hers to dwell upon. “Tea? I think we have—Peeta has chamomile.”
Haymitch shakes his head, just enough to quash any flicker of hope in her. Her enthusiasm, though performed, falters at once. How frustrating, to not even be able to pretend nothing had changed.
“Trying to limit the drinking,” he says, probably half a joke, but it doesn’t amuse her in the least.
“I can see that, thank you,” she snaps before she can stop herself, eyes darting to his hands. He doesn’t even bother hiding them anymore.
She almost misses the old days, when he at least tried to pretend. Those days are gone, and with them, she suspects, her sanity.
But she chooses not to say that.
“Always so stiff, you,” he mutters.
“May I say it is only to counterbalance your wobbliness, darling,” she retorts.
The forest is hardly Effie’s forte. It is, however, most certainly Katniss’s—and so, when Katniss invites her one day, awkward and as if unsure why she even bothered, Effie agrees to go.
She’s never been. Not once in her life. The Capitol was perfectly devoid of such hazards—no wild animals prowling about, no bark crunching underfoot. Only curated order and nature kept at a safe, tasteful distance. And no bugs either, which becomes something she quickly learns to appreciate as she stumbles pitifully after Katniss.
The invitation—really an apology in disguise—came shortly after a long conversation between Katniss and Peeta. It keeps Effie clinging to her suspicion that the idea wasn’t entirely Katniss’s own. Which is something to dwell on, at least, when she’s wretchedly tangled in branches and leaves and whatever else lurks in this endless undergrowth.
Still, the outing proves worthwhile. They manage, at the very least, a kind of quiet truce. Katniss no longer glares at her with fury. Pity, now, which is—perhaps—an improvement.
Mid-autumn is an odd time: trees shedding their leaves, grass turning dull and brittle. Effie finds it peculiar, because, no matter how hard she tries, she can’t recall anything like it from her childhood. In the Capitol, such decay simply didn’t exist.
The ways of life in District Twelve continue to astonish her. And yet—and yet!—she chooses to remain a little longer. Not permanently, no. Absolutely not. But perhaps until spring. Or summer.
The hunt with Katniss makes her realise something she never had the chance to see before—not until now, when she’s finally stopped to look around. She sees it in Katniss. In Peeta. Even in Haymitch, faint though the trace may be. Most of all, she sees it in the children—unbothered, laughing, utterly unguarded. Children she’s started to notice more and more.
It’s not a dramatic thing. It’s not as though she were born with an expiration date, unlike those around her. She never had to worry about making it to eighteen. That kind of thought would never have entered her mind as a girl. And it doesn’t change anything, not really. It’s just something she notices one day, while heading to the train station.
She realises that she was never loved by her parents. Nor wanted. She and Proserpina were repayments. Compensation for family failures long past (failures that, she thinks now, might well have been their only glory). Conceived, in essence, to serve a single purpose. And she knows how it ends. Proserpina lost to it long ago.
It’s a simple realisation. She’s an adult. Independent. With her own life, her own convictions. It changes nothing.
Still, she feels a faint sting when she watches real mothers, not Avoxes, tending to their children. But then she reminds herself that such a thought is probably self-indulgent, unbecoming for a former Capitol woman spared participation in the Games, and so she turns away and walks on.
It feels sick and twisted, but she can’t stop herself from going over it again and again—even days later. Thoughts of childhood wake her in the night. They aren’t nightmares. Nightmares are different—because where there’s childhood, there’s Proserpina, and where there’s Proserpina, there are her legs in the air and a bruised mark around her neck.
Those are things Effie would rather not think about. She tries not to. But that only makes it worse, drawing up a torrent of thoughts so vile, so vulgar, she often feels she’s on the edge of retching.
And still, she can’t seem to let the thought go. It would be repayment, really. Which means it would be foolish. Repayment to herself, probably—for what she never received. And yet she wonders: if—though it never happened, never could have happened—but if she’d had to bear some innocent thing, born of hate, in that vile cage—would she have loved it?
She feels it. She knows it, somewhere deep inside—she knows her insides well enough by now, after all the scrubbing, all the desperate cleansing of possibility. And still she feels—knows—she would have. Or at least, she would have tried. And that, she thinks, is more than she ever saw in her own life.
But that’s a dream. Or a nightmare. She’s not sure which. And even if—she remembers, dimly, that it was punishable by tongue-cutting to bear children after forty. Some terrible diseases had happened then, she vaguely recalls from school.
Which means: it was never hers to bear. And so it needs to stay unthought. Locked away. Because otherwise—
Well. She wouldn’t do anything. Not really. She wasn’t like Proserpina—never so histrionic, never so frayed at the edges, always craving some final reason. Effie was easier to tame, they said. More obedient. Less clever. That was the word she always heard.
Effie would never do such a thing, they said. And it was meant as praise—so what else was there to say?
But. The further she keeps from the sight of meadows and children, the safer she is. So she does exactly that. The more she scrubs her insides clean, the less she sees the children, and the more she works, the better it is.
After all, it’s unbecoming for a Capitol woman her age to think of such things.
Of course she stitches the damned jeans in the end. After weeks of swearing she wouldn’t fall into the trap of mending what was never hers to fix, she does it anyway. Out of habit, mostly. Apparently, she’s grown far too used to tidying up mess after mess after mess—a never-ending cycle of Haymitch’s failings becoming her specialities.
One seam along the leg had come loose. Hardly a catastrophe; it takes her all of fifteen minutes.
She tries to toss them back to him several times, but each time she turns up, he’s either passed out or in some state she'd rather not involve herself in. Eventually, she settles for leaving them on his porch. A fair compromise. They're gone not long after.
Haymitch disappears for a few days. Or rather, his body stays where she’d expect, but his mind wanders—steeped in more bitterness than usual, more distant. He returns eventually, dishevelled, worn, but returns nonetheless. Still, she suspects he won’t keep returning much longer, not with the yellow cast in his eyes deepening by the day. That, she thinks, tells its own story.
So she decides it’s as good a time as any. She’d rather be clear now, while there’s still a chance. And with that thought, she does the heroic thing: crosses the alleyway uninvited, armed only with silent resolve.
It’s the first time since she’s known him—more than twenty-six years now—that she comes without a reason. She knows the house by heart, could probably walk through it in complete darkness and emerge without a scratch. But it’s always been for something. Whether for his Victory Tour, or later to haul him first to the Hall of Justice, then to the Capitol—she’s never come just to visit.
In the later years—three or four last Games, she thinks—she’s started arriving a bit early, yes. The afternoon before. Still, always with a purpose: to clean him up, make him marginally presentable, and try, futilely, to manage the drinking.
Not that it ever worked. Not really.
So being here now, without a clear purpose, feels dislocated. The only excuse she can muster is to check he’s still alive—and that hardly feels like a proper reason.
Pretending, then, is her best bet.
“Haymitch!” she calls out as she pushes open the door. She’d rather not get stabbed for sneaking up on him—once was more than enough.
Silence answers. Which, all things considered, seems like a good sign. She steps inside, shutting the door behind her with a quiet click.
It’s not as bad as she expected. Not as good as she might have hoped, but she takes what she gets—and this, she decides, qualifies as stable. She’s seen far worse: bottles everywhere, some half-empty, some still full. She’s seen months of leaking roof, watermarks creeping down the walls, a thick mildew stench clinging to everything. She’s seen him worse, too.
So she supposes she ought to be pleased that he isn’t worse—not today—when she walks into the living room and finds him sprawled on the couch.
Not on the floor, at least. Which is probably another good sign.
“Welcome,” she says, ensuring her intonation is flawless, her diction even more so.
He shoots her a suspicious look, still not bothered enough to make himself remotely presentable.
“Hardly. What do you want?”
That stings, just a little. But she responds with a perfectly polite smile.
“I see some things never change. Would you mind?” she asks, already moving to open the window—the one she always opens.
He pulls a face but doesn’t object, which—she tries very hard to convince herself—is another good sign.
Rather than protest, he shifts upright on the couch and lets out a congested sniff so thick it almost makes her gag.
“Haven’t we talked about that already? Using a tissue is far more civilised,” she says, her smile still poised as she perches on her usual spot: the armchair, lightly stained but tolerable.
“So is coming announced,” he replies.
He’s looking fairly decent today, she decides. Not good, certainly, but not collapsing either.
“What do you want?” he repeats.
A question repeated becomes a demand. It wants an answer—one she has no real wish to give. So she tilts her head, just slightly, and in her most clueless, most infuriating, most disarming voice:
“How are you today?”
She’s never asked before, and it shows. It should pass as idle small-talk—something meaningless, easy to abandon if needed. Good enough, she hopes, for a beginning.
He stretches out and props his feet on the table between them—bare, unwashed. She refuses to look at them, fixing her gaze squarely on his instead.
He’s smirking now, the slow, dangerous smile of a predator sensing blood.
“Crappy question. How d’you think.”
Effie is not prepared for such a turn of events. She keeps her gaze squarely on him, but already she can feel her earlier resolve ebbing away, second by second. If he won’t give her the space to pretend, then she truly doesn’t know what—
“Pour you some?” Haymitch asks, bottle already in one hand, his glass in the other.
He’s going to be the end of her. And if she doesn’t act—do something, anything—she knows it’ll be sooner rather than later. But what can she do, really, when he’s unreachable by any means she has?
“I’ll go get a glass,” she says, instead of doing anything that might matter.
She gets up. Walks to the kitchen. Washes the glass first—she doesn’t trust the sticky texture clinging to it. Then she lets the water run and gives herself a moment. Just that. A moment.
She shouldn’t have come. And not just now—she shouldn’t have come to Twelve at all. She should’ve stayed in the Capitol, where she belonged. Or at least, where she could pretend, and others were gracious enough to pretend with her.
Not in Twelve. In Twelve, even the seasons refuse to be ignored. In Twelve, she lives on venison. In Twelve, she’s at the mercy of people who either hate her or couldn’t care less.
Which is her own doing, so she shouldn’t complain. She can leave whenever she likes. That’s the deal.
When she returns to the living room, Haymitch has made some minimal effort. He’s sitting upright now, feet off the table. And, by some miracle, he hasn’t already drained his glass.
He pours her some.
It smells foul and tastes even worse. She coughs as the alcohol burns her throat—a sharp, acrid sting—and she can’t imagine how he drinks it like water.
She straightens in her seat.
“It was a genuine question,” she says, though she still can’t quite let go of the smile or the polished tone. “Just so you know.”
“Couldn’t care less,” he replies, flat and cruel—meant only to wound. Not an answer at all.
She feels the effort of smiling tighten the muscles in her cheeks, painfully now.
“I’m so sorry to hear that. Do excuse me for asking. I just thought—if you truly didn’t care, you wouldn’t be quite so defensive.”
He downs his glass in one go and sets it down with a loud clink.
“What do you want,” he repeats, lower now, the edge sharper, the words baring teeth.
Effie realises she won’t be able to smile her way through the rest of this—not if she intends to walk out of his house in one piece. But great things, she’s learned—mostly from Katniss—often require great sacrifices.
So she lets the smile falter. Slouches, just slightly. Takes another sip of that vile drink and coughs against the burn in her throat.
“How are you?” she asks again, her voice roughened by the alcohol.
“Use your damn head for once,” he snaps. “Fucking amazing. Any other questions?”
She shakes her head.
“None,” she says. “Could you not—”
The words catch somewhere between her throat and tongue as he pours himself another drink and downs it in one go. Then he smiles at her—a smile with no warmth, no humour. Something jagged and unreal.
“Could I what?”
“Could you not—have you even looked in a mirror lately, Haymitch? You’re yellower than a canary.”
His anger burns. The kind of fire she’s seen during the Games, when nothing is left untouched. She knows it well. She knows it from splintered chairs, shattered bottles, and more than one moment she feared he’d broken a bone.
She can feel it now, seeping through the floorboards.
“Have you?” he snaps. “You’re pompous-er than a peacock.”
“Peacocks are very graceful birds. Canaries, on the other hand—”
“Don’t start with that shit,” he cuts her off, voice low. He leans forward, elbows on knees—close now. It should be grounding, but it isn’t. It only fans the heat.
She draws a breath. Steadies herself.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? After the Quarter Quell,” she adds quickly, suddenly ashamed of how vague her question sounded. “You just disappeared. Not a single word.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he snaps. “Was the whole thing meant to fail because your royal ass couldn’t cope without a few months of the Games?”
“Half the things I did weren’t even my responsibility,” she shoots back. “But I did them anyway, because you were so miserable—and still, you didn’t think—”
“Did I ask you to? If I remember right, I told you to get lost—so don’t turn it ‘round on me.”
“No, you didn’t, that’s exactly the point, can’t you see? You didn’t say anything, and still you assumed I’d handle it all. The sponsors. The gifts. Your tributes.”
“Didn’t require much thought from you, did it? Seemed to manage just fine.”
“I cleaned up your mess for twenty years,” she says, voice rising, cracking. “And what I got was—”
She breaks off.
She can’t finish it. She can’t say what she should—not about the cell, not the cage, not the faces, not any of it.
She falls silent. Best that way.
“What you got was a pardon,” Haymitch spits. “And you’ve got the nerve to whine about it?”
Her lips press into a hard line, the smile long gone, replaced by something far uglier. Something she despises herself for being capable of. No wonder she has so many wrinkles now, if she’s able to grimace like that.
The drink burns worse than before when she lifts it again—sharper, more acidic. She sets the glass down carefully. Crosses her legs. Hands folded neatly in her lap. Spine straight. Chin high. Everything in place—except the smile.
“How was it in Thirteen?”, she asks, careful for her voice to not break again.
Haymitch doesn’t respond. He rarely does, at first—burns just as easily in his own rage, whether by intention or collateral. Still, he falls silent now, teetering on the edge of something. Whether it’s lashing out or shutting down, she’ll have to wait and see.
“I heard you went through withdrawal,” she says, softer than she means to. “So they had a hospital there, then? That’s... that’s good, right?”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Only the weight of his breathing proves he’s still in the room with her.
There’s nothing left to do but keep going.
“I didn’t get those luxuries,” she says. “No compartment. No food. Nothing.”
She swallows. The words feel too large for the space between them.
“You knew what he was capable of,” she says at last. And she doesn't want to say the rest, but it is already rising in her throat. “You knew better than anyone. So did you hate me that much? Did I do something so wrong that you wanted me there?”
She feels stupid, asking that. Maybe everyone was right about her all along: the easier one to tame, the less brilliant, the more compliant. Proserpina wouldn’t have asked such a thing—Proserpina wouldn’t have given twenty years of her life to one man. What she’s doing now is very Effie-like. Not Proserpina-like at all.
Which is a shame. Because the only thing Effie’s ever been sure she got absolutely right was being a sister.
Still, Haymitch remains silent, with that storm gathering behind his eyes. She sees the signs: almost lunging at her, almost smashing something, almost reaching for the bottle just to spite her.
But he doesn’t. Not yet. He’s too caught, she thinks, on something she said.
“Now you’re bringing it up,” he says at last, voice grim. “And you think you can? Think you can compare it?”
His tone is almost mocking. So much about this moment is almost.
But she meets his eyes, squarely.
“Yes. Yes, I think I can.”
She remembers the moment it clicked—what really happened to all the people he loved. It came far too late. Fifteen years after the fact, during some drunken spiral. He’d mumbled it out one night, not even conscious, slurring through a storm of liquor, and she’d practically dragged him away from the cameras, hissing at him to shut up.
By then she’d had suspicions—enough to plant the seed. Enough to remember colleagues vanishing, just gone, like smoke.
By the time she truly understood, it was already Peeta’s and Katniss’s Games. Too late to say anything. And even if it hadn’t been—he was clearer then than he’d been in years. More sober. More irritable. More horrified. So she told herself: don’t bring up dead relatives when, for the first time in years, he finally has a chance to win again.
Maybe it isn’t entirely wise to bring it up now either, she thinks, watching his face.
“You little, dirty—” he growls. “You swines are all the same. Entitled. So damn self-assured—”
“Don’t.” A warning, but also a plea. “Don’t say—”
“Oh, now I don’t get a say? What, you don’t like the truth? That you’re just a mindless, fucking—stupid little—”
“Do you really want to start trading truths?”
The words set him off. He’s on his feet now. She wouldn’t normally say he towered over her—but now, standing in fury while she remains seated in her stained little chair, he does.
“The only truth is you're so fucking hollow. So entitled to everything—”
“Mine’s different,” she cuts in, no preamble. No softness. Her blood is rising now. “Mine says you’re a drunk, and you refuse to see—”
“So stupid, you. What, you smiled at a sponsor or two and think you saved my kids?”
“No,” she snaps. “My truth is I tried to help you so long you stopped noticing. You started expecting it. You took it for granted. And what did I get—”
“You think that makes it yours? You really think you earned—”
“I did what I could,” she hisses. “And it was your job to protect them, not mine. But I did it anyway. Because you—”
“And what did you do, huh? Wink? Bat those disgusting lashes?”
“And where were you, Haymitch? On drink five? Ten? Or were you already passed out?”
“Did I draw the names? Or was that you, huh?”
“I did,” she says, her voice suddenly icy. “And you know I was punished for it.”
“So what, you cried. And now that balances my family dying? That’s your comparison?”
“I’m not comparing that,” she grits out. “I’m saying you left me in the Capitol—”
“And good! What, you think you’re some soldier now? A martyr? You think Thirteen was worse than your cushy little room in—”
“In what?” The words burst from her, unstoppable now. “That piss-hole? With barely enough room to turn my head? That? But there was always room, wasn’t there, for them to—”
The words die on her tongue. It’s too much—too much to say, too much to admit. She’d rather die than speak it aloud. Or even think it aloud.
For a moment, she hopes he won’t understand. He’s a man, after all—and in her experience, men rarely grasp what goes unsaid. That had always been something of an advantage. If she dressed well enough, showed just enough bust, she rarely had trouble getting what she needed. And if she didn’t say they disgusted her, they never seemed to notice. Or care.
But Haymitch had never fallen for the bust routine. She knew where his interests lay. Not as circuitous as Cinna’s, perhaps—just... elsewhere. Not her bust. Not her. But rather some ghost of a girl who lived only in his dreams.
So maybe she shouldn’t pin her hopes on his obliviousness. Not him. Not now.
There are three stages.
First, he looks almost indifferent. His face remains twisted in that awful anger.
Second, his eyes narrow. As if checking her for a lie.
Third—though it takes a beat—she sees it: recognition. Horror, maybe, if she were feeling generous. Just a flicker of it. Barely there. But enough.
There go her hopes, she thinks, holding her breath.
His voice stays low—carefully, dangerously low.
“One of their own, even?”
Effie can’t admit it. She can’t deny it either. And it is an accusation—not just aimed at her, but at the entire lie she’d swallowed whole her entire life. A lie she chose. One she upheld, willingly silencing every flicker of doubt that ever tried to rise.
Would it have been different if she’d spoken up back then? If she’d acted? If she hadn’t been so eager to become someone—anyone—as long as they were admired, envied, wanted?
Something strange happens then. Haymitch seems to know exactly what she’s thinking, though she hasn’t said a word. He’s still seething, probably still balancing on the edge of an explosion or collapse. But for now, he simply reaches out and pats her arm once. Awkward. Almost absent.
Then he pours her another drink, sits back, and seems satisfied to leave her sitting in the wreckage.
Effie takes a deep breath. There’s no time to waste if she’s going to pretend it meant nothing.
She straightens. Brushes her hair behind her ear—it’s so thin now, no wonder she’d preferred wigs in that past life. She breathes through the lump in her throat and pushes the thoughts away, one by one.
Then, a final coat of polish: the smile.
“Excuse me for that,” she says, as brightly as she can manage. “It’ll be best to forget this whole conversation. Thank you for your time, and I do hope you have a pleasant day.”
“Don’t fuck around,” Haymitch snaps, oblivious—or indifferent—to her grace, her courtesy, her effort to smooth it all over. “Get lost, if that’s what you want.”
She’s not even sure anymore. Is there anything she wants? Not now. Certainly not now.
“I’m not—first of all, language, please. Second of all, I believe we both crossed a line, so it’s best if we simply forget what was said.”
“Forgetting’s your specialty, isn’t it?” he mutters, pouring himself another. She’s apparently too much to bear when he’s not quite drunk enough. He downs it in one go.
For some reason, Effie can’t tear her eyes away.
“If you wanna forget it, that’s fine with me.”
He gestures vaguely in her direction, and something in the motion catches her.
“It’s strange to see you—” he waves again, frowning, searching for the words. “Somebody else would’ve dropped the act by now.”
She doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing left to say. She’s overpoured, overflowed—and now, there’s simply no denying any of it. Not with words.
But there are other ways.
So she smiles even harder. She’s sure it’s perfect—flawless, even. And she’s almost certain she’s still pretty enough to make it count.
“We figured they wouldn’t pull any dirty tricks, what with you being an escort,” Haymitch growls, voice low and dangerous. “Thought it best you didn’t know anything.”
He pauses. Then smirks.
“You wouldn’t have liked Thirteen anyway. Colour was banned just as strictly as booze.”
At first, the incident robs her of sleep. It's a horrifying thing—to know someone knows. Not in vague, evasive terms, but explicitly. Far too explicitly for her liking.
And yet, in time, it lets her marginally loosen the noose she’s kept around herself. Because if Haymitch knows—and it hasn’t changed how he treats her—then maybe, just maybe, if someone else knew, they’d treat her the same. Not that she’s the same as she was. But it’s nice, she thinks, to be treated as if she is. As if nothing has changed at all.
There’s also a quiet, unexpected pleasure in Haymitch knowing. First: not seeing him at all (this, she secretly resents, though she tells herself he needs space—just as she needed time to understand what happened to him). Then: seeing him more often (and in a better state, she has to admit. Noticeably so—even to people less observant than she is).
Eventually, it feels almost liberating. Everything has been said: every grievance, every wound laid bare. There’s nothing left to accuse him of. No hidden debts. If she focuses hard enough, it even feels like a blank slate.
Not that she’s forgotten the awful things he said. Not entirely. But then again, if she’s been sticking pins in him for years—privately and publicly, in equal measure—she supposes she can let him try to earn forgiveness.
Until then, she has plenty to do, and even more to take care of. So it’s not as though she’s waiting day and night for Haymitch to come to his senses. That, she does only at night. And only sometimes.
Apparently, when she was staying busy avoiding herself and everything else, a new act has been agreed upon by President Paylor and a handful of others—people she’s never heard of and couldn’t begin to place. The act is called a constitution, and it's supposedly designed to give everyone a fair chance at a fair life.
One part, in particular, strikes her as utterly bizarre. Peeta explains it, gently: the president is to be chosen by all people.
Effie can’t fathom how someone like her—with no political background, no influence, and not a single qualified opinion—could possibly be expected to choose a president. The idea unsettles her. She dislikes it entirely. But when others cheer, she supposes the problem must lie with her—not with the idea.
The constitution also dictates that no one can remain president for more than seven years. This too feels odd to her. If someone is doing the job well, why replace them?
But again, people cheer. So she resigns herself to not understanding any of it.
Many more things had escaped her notice when she was so determined not to notice anything. Now, it seems, there's a kind of baby fever infecting everything and everyone. She could swear that out of the forty or so women currently living in Twelve, thirty-eight are either pregnant, recently gave birth, or planning to be pregnant soon. Thirty-eight—because she and Katniss most certainly are not.
Another observation: chaos seems to reign across television and radio. There are multiple channels now, all equally serene and wildly unprofessional. The reporters look as though they’ve just walked out of a war zone—which is simply untrue. Each network appears to have chosen its own narrative: one focuses obsessively on the Districts, another on the Capitol, and one avoids anything remotely important.
That last one is her favourite. It broadcasts simple recipes for hours on end—easy enough that even Effie can follow them without catastrophe.
Next: fashion. Grey seems to be in season. Fortunately, nearly all her clothing is permanently dusted in a fine layer of coal and ash, which—unexpectedly—makes her look quite on trend. Still, she’d prefer the shade to be intentional, not imposed by soot.
Fashion also means that one day, while watching television, she finds herself compelled to write a letter to the station. She informs them—quite bluntly—that their reporters look thoroughly unpresentable. She receives no reply.
There’s also an emerging problem with the Avoxes. She understands it—partially. It seems only fair they should now be included in society, now that the so-called “crimes” they committed are no longer considered crimes at all. But still, she can’t quite grasp how it will work. Voice synthesizers? Spelling machines? It's unresolved.
And strangely, that unresolved bit gives her a twisted sense of comfort: that not everything has been repaired, improved, or perfected while she was busy trying to forget.