Chapter Text
August 1, 75 ADD
Woodbine Chance. Attempted evasion of the Reaping. Shot in the back of the head.
Lou Lou’s family. Crime unknown. Punishment to the parents unknown. Daughter brainwashed, drugged, and tortured into pretending to be someone else. Poisoned to death in the Arena.
Haymitch Abernathy. Stopped a peacekeeper from hurting his girl. Reaped.
Mags MacGregor and Wiress Dubois. Possibly aiding Haymitch in rebellion. Tortured until each lost the thing they most valued – Mags, her compassionate words and Wiress, her mind. Both were eventually murdered in the third Quarter Quell.
Sid and Jolene Abernathy. Loving Haymitch Abernathy. Burned to death.
Lenore Dove Baird. Singing seditious songs. Arrest and time in jail. Loving Haymitch Abernathy. Poisoned to death.
Effie Trinket. Displayed sympathy for Haymitch Abernathy. Sentenced to working as District Twelve’s escort.
Clay Chance. Crime unknown. Hanged and then shot.
Binnie Chance. Aiding a criminal. Died in the District jail.
Seneca Crane. Idiot tool of the rebellion. Poisoned.
Marcus Plinth. Spray painted on a statue of President Snow. Made an avox.
Unknown man in District eleven. Displayed solidarity with Victors from District Twelve. Shot.
Gale Hawthorne. Poaching. Whipped in the town square.
Victors suspected of rebellious activity or sympathy. Reaped into the third Quarter Quell.
Cinna Plinth. Rebel. Beaten to death.
Portia. Possible rebel. Beaten to death. He didn’t even know her last name.
Truncheon Twit. Aided in the rebel escape from the Capitol. Hanged.
Katniss Abernathy. Marrying Haymitch Abernathy. Punishment unknown. Unfathomable.
What would they do to Katniss in an attempt to get information from her that she didn’t have? What would they do to her just to hurt him now that Snow knew he was a rebel?
Haymitch exhaled as slowly as he could. Something the head doctor in Thirteen told him to do. When his thoughts spiraled around the rumors he’d heard over the years of prisons with tiled rooms and drains in the floor. Of sexual violence. Hunger. Sleep deprivation. Stress positions. Water boarding. Beatings. Electrocution. Mutts. And public violence like floggings and hangings. Mutilation.
He rolled over from one side to his other in the bed. The cot. In the medical ward. He knew the mirror on the far side of the room was see-through from the other side. He was under watch. So he didn’t hurt himself. Again.
The fuckers. They took away alcohol, said there was none in all of Thirteen. And they took away his escape. Everything in the room was soft now or bolted down.
What were they doing to her? Or had they already done? Haymitch had been in Thirteen for 17 days. They could have done a lot to her in 17 days. She might already be a corpse. Or ashes. Food for the animals in the zoo.
Capitol news celebrated her capture amid the chaos of the destruction of the Arena and first forays into all out war. They showed footage of her being walked into the Justice Building. Her face looked pale and devoid of any emotion. They said there was no telling what this seductress had done on behalf of the ungrateful, rebellious scum. That she was one dangerous criminal the Capitol could sleep better at night knowing was behind bars.
Behind bars. Caged. Like an animal. His Katniss.
He’d heard that Effie, Johanna, Annie, and Enobaria were captured, too. He was sorry. Really sorry. Especially for Effie, who was no more a rebel than Haymitch was a Plinth. But she was associated with him, and that was enough. And for Johanna, who showed him kindness in the only way she knew how when they were both so fucking broken. And Annie, poor shit crazy Annie couldn’t have been faring well. Enobaria always scared Haymitch. He wasn’t sure if she was a rebel or just caught up like Effie and Annie.
Had they broken Johanna yet? What would it take before she told them everything she knew? What did she know?
The drugs they gave Haymitch to calm him down made him drowsy even when he was awake. Made his head feel fuzzy and his limbs slow. And if they kept him compliant, they did nothing to help him feel any better. So he lay on his cot, hot tears leaking down his face and off the tip of his nose onto the thin pillow beneath his head.
The head doctor made him talk. Said he’d feel better if he talked. Like talking would make Katniss safe. Like telling the doctor how her capture made him feel would make her less likely to be dead. Haymitch kept silent most of the time in their sessions just to spite the self righteous prick.
The magnetic click of the door lock startled Haymitch out of his thoughts. It wasn’t time for them to bring the food he declined to eat. It wasn’t time for the medicines they forced him to take. And the doc had already come in the morning.
He didn’t bother to get up, but he did open his eyes and turn his head enough to see who they were allowing into his cell.
Finnick Odair.
The kid looked like shit. His hair was greasy and he was too skinny and he needed to shave. He wore the same uniform as Haymitch, labeling him as a patient, too. They’d removed the bandage from his forearm and the wound from where he dug the tracker out of himself looked red and messy.
“Can I sit?” he asked.
There was nowhere to sit in the cell except the bed so, with a humph to make sure the kid knew it pissed him off, Haymitch sat up. Finnick sat next to him, their legs dangling from the end of the high hospital bed. Finnick’s feet had slippers. Haymitch’s were cold.
“You look like shit,” Haymitch said.
Finnick huffed a hint of a laugh. “You don’t look too pretty either right now, old man” he responded. He had to look away before he said, “They told me you tried to off yourself. That’s why I can’t have a razor, either.”
“Sorry, kid. I know how you prize your smooth face.” Haymitch wondered what the doctors on the other side of the mirror thought of this small talk, their rapport. He waved a sarcastic little salute, just so they knew he was aware of their presence. Their judgement.
Without asking permission or apologizing for invading his space, Finnick picked up Haymitch’s arm that lay closest to him. He rucked up the sleeve past his elbow, exposing the bandages and medical tape. “Both sides?” he asked. In answer, Haymitch showed off the identical bandaging on his other forearm. Finnick threw his arm back down in disgust. Or jealousy. Couldn’t say.
“Why are you here?” Haymitch asked.
“Same reason as you,” Finnick answered. “They have Annie.” Haymitch knew. He waited silently, knowing Finnick had more to say. “That’s what made me panic in the Arena. I mean, it was bad enough listening to her screams coming out of those fucking birds’ mouths. But if they knew that she mattered enough to me to torture me with her voice like that, Snow knew what she means to me.”
It hadn’t occurred to Haymitch, he was ashamed to admit. And while there was nothing Finnick could have done while in the Arena, Haymitch should have realized. He should have gotten her on the hovercraft. They had thought there would be time to smuggle her out later. She would be no more at risk than any other Victor or mentor still in the Capitol. There was a plan to get that second wave out. Haymitch wondered if they had saved anyone or if that was just a lie to make the fleeing rebels feel better.
“And now Snow has her,” Haymitch said needlessly.
“Like they have Katniss,” Finnick replied.
“So they locked you up in the hospital ward like me?” he asked. Haymitch had sworn to himself that he was through caring about anyone ever again in the days he lay in his cot, but the first familiar face and there he went again.
“I didn’t get a chance to try anything as productive as you did. But yeah. They figured out that I was a risk,” he said. Then he stuck his middle finger up in the air and waved it at the mirror. Something he knew kids in Four did, like cursing but with a hand gesture.
Haymitch worried the inside of his cheek with his tongue as he weighed whether or not to tell Finnick what he was thinking. He wanted to tell him, needed to relieve himself of the burden and Finnick was as good a friend as any now. Knew that Finnick had spent years having to love Annie in secret and maybe he’d understand. But he knew the fucking head doctors were listening.
He gave up questioning himself and said, “I never told her I love her. Mostly because I thought she’d panic and hit me if I did at first. But then because I thought we’d have time. I didn’t need to rush. And now she’s gone. Probably.” He had been so fucking stupid.
Finnick looked at him with pity but then his face screwed up into an ugly expression and he admitted, “I hope she’s dead. And Annie. I hope they’re all dead. Because if they’re not, it’s so much worse.”
Haymitch’s voice was gravelly with emotion as he said, “Yeah.”