HA (![]() ![]() @ 2014-01-08 21:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! interim, - districts, victor: 50th haymitch abernathy, victor: 52nd diana lyme |
Who: Diana Lyme & Haymitch Abernathy
What: PROMPT: GRUDGE | Haymitch calls Lyme. Somewhere in all the disturbing conversation, there's totally an apology for being a dick to her when Dory won. Totally.
Where: Lyme's house, D2 & Haymitch's house, D12.
When: About 4 months after the close of the 55th Hunger Games.
Status: Complete.
Phone had been plugged back in for a few weeks; Haymitch had been answering it for about half of that. Inevitably, the first batch of calls had all been from a frantic Pickles (was there any other kind?). She was meant to be calling him again on a day that Haymitch suspected was this one. Blargh. He slammed down onto the floor besides his phone and picked through what passed as his phonebook. The lipstick smudged napkin with Pere’s drunken scrawl was flicked aside, as was the strip club card with Chaff’s loud letters. Haymitch pressed a thumb across the string of numbers printed in neat lowercase atop the 10 of spades, before he set that one aside, too. He lingered longest over the squashed wine menu with Ondine’s steady cursive marching between the whites. The next one he went to toss aside. Didn’t. Haymitch turned it over in his hands, that creased, dull white sheet of paper, threaded through with shadows of biro from scores kept on the other side. Might as well get some use out of being sober. He yanked the phone off the hook and pressed it up into the crook of his shoulder, punching in her phone number without once unfolding the score card to check. His excellent memory, such a gift. The dial tone cut off, and Haymitch let his mouth do whatever it wanted, mocking and not unfriendly, “The pits of Hell calling. Who has the displeasure of speaking to me?” She’d been taught phone etiquette, part of the useless reams of information that Diana had decided she didn’t care for. She’d never used it before her victory and wasn’t entirely sure how to use it now. She would call Marcus if he was out of town, use it to keep in touch with her few friends who had to return to other districts, but overall she didn’t much care for the device. Her usual habit was to drop in on the other victors of District Two unannounced, and she wasn’t planning on changing her habits. However, it was universally acknowledged in their home that all calls would be for her. “Hello?” Lyme asked brusquely upon picking up the receiver, a breach of manners that’d surely earn her a reprimand if it was someone from the Capitol on the other end. And then the voice started speaking, and Lyme sighed slowly. It had been a few months, time enough to bury herself in distractions with training and keeping away from other people as much as she could, but she hadn’t forgotten what had happened at the end of the fifty-fifth Games. She frowned, waiting Haymitch to stop talking. Her instinct was to snap, confront him while he sounded sober, but the words that she finally said sounded more patient than usual. Still on edge, but a little quieter than might have been expected from a slighted Lyme. “You sound remarkably alive, considering you’re calling from the pits of Hell.” Haymitch shrugged, for all the good it did. By the sounds of it, she was still sore over what he’d said. Might as well get the ball rolling. “I’m 12, it’s remarkable I’m alive as is.” He took out the deck of cards in his back pocket and started dealing them out for solitaire. Who cared if they were tarot? Something to do with his hands. Something to do if she went far enough that he had to tune her out. “Say what you wanna say, bitterheart, might even I’ll have an answer you like.” Lyme’s sigh was quieter, frustrated, and she started to tap her fingernails on the table that stood next to the telephone. She sank down to sit beside it, happy to talk to him for a little longer. “Did you miss me, Abernathy?” She smiled a little, in spite of herself, trying to sound as casual as possible when she’d been wound up more and more over the last few months that had passed. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re calling? And what’s the answer I’ll like?” Lyme pressed on, staring at the wall in front of her as she spoke. Haymitch bugged his eyes out at the Page of Cups. People and their talk of him missing them. “A fleeting insanity. It’s gone now. Buh-bye.” He pulled the phone away from his ear, smacked it against the hardwood floor and then pressed it back in time to catch the tail end of her question. “Miiiight like.” He corrected her, dragging out the word for emphasis. Who knew, really, with that one, caught as she was between being Two and her demands for answers to every one of her intelligent questions. “Best not to talk to me on Finale day.” The words came out harder than he was used to. Much easier to just to drunkenly spout out No talky and be done with it. “I say things.” He hesitated, but there was nothing more he could say than things. “Everyyyyyyybody gets it.” That familiar frown creased her brow once again. She could be patient, but sometimes she was less inclined to. She listened to him talk, hooking the phone between her chin and shoulder so that she could curl up more comfortably where she sat on the floor. Diana leaned against the small table and pulled one arm around her knees before cupping the phone in her hand once again. “Uh-huh,” she was slow to respond, clearly unimpressed although she had settled herself more comfortably with the optimistic thought that this conversation could go a little better. “I read. No talky,” she mocked his words, tone bitter. It occurred to her, and not for the first time, that she should be a little more lenient with that kind of drunken logic. Haymitch was far from the only victor to go to alcohol; Lyme herself was probably the odd one out with her aversion to the stuff. She pursed her lips, thinking her words through before responding to him. “I know, but I don’t understand,” she admitted. And then, her second thought was said without any consideration. “Am I so goddamn stupid in thinking that maybe one day it won’t hurt when that happens to us all each year?” Haymitch wasn’t about to tell her that no talky was his way of protecting his friends from himself. You figured it out yourselves, had someone else theorize it to you, remained in the dark -- anything that wasn’t Haymitch explaining himself. He flipped through several cards, sorting them into chains and cheating with a fluidity that would have gone unnoticed, even if there had been anyone else around to see. “Not stupid.” There was no pause, no need to search for that answer. He knew stupidity when he saw it, clear as vodka, and this wasn’t it. “What you are, my girl, is innocent.” His voice had slipped into that blunt, matter-a-fact tone that happened when he was past certain he was right. “The open secret of the Hunger Games, the one Outliers learn early and what the Volunteers can’t stand to be taught, is that the Games hurt for everybody, every goddamn year. Everybody who’s District. And that’s because they’re meant to.” A smirk twisted his mouth, thoughts soured by the flash of the word treason. Was this that? Probably. Most everything that came out of his brain was. No family left to be taken from him, although he was sure Lyme had some. Still he didn’t stop, voice drifting into that tone he swam into when he was doing sincere Tarot readings, that voice he’d used to weave poetry to bring Sky to his arms. “You hate it, being fooled, smart girl like you, and you think that all you want is the truth, for the world to make sense again, because you’ve not accepted yet that the two are mutually exclusive.” Haymitch closed his eyes, head bumping up against the wall behind him, mind full of lilac, voice flattening out. “And just like all the rest of us, you think that bringing home a Victor will ease your own pain, except in our case, it’s your mind that won’t stop. Someone from your own District, someone fresh and raw, to batter with questions until you’re satisfied you understand again.” And there it was, that twist of self-inflicted mockery that went along with the flash of unnatural blue and an axe buried into a girl’s forehead. “Because for the first time in your life, you want to be proven wrong; there’s no monsters here, just honour and victory and the favoured few. You want someone to tell you it gets better, and you want them to have the proof to back it up.” His eyes flickered open, sightless and seeing too much of this ornate house that stank of alcohol fumes. “Except no one can, and no one ever will.” Briefly, Haymitch considered asking her how he’d done, but what would be the point of that? There was no way to ask without mockery edged in his voice. “--And don’t say ‘us’ around other Outliers,” He tossed out, for all intents and purposes a throwaway comment, “Or me, on one of my bad days. Damn near all Outliers aren’t going to care that Volunteers have the right to hurt, too.” Lyme listened, mostly silent, although she let out a bitter “ha” of laughter at the idea of her as an innocent. There was blood on her hands, just like the rest of them, and had struggled since to convince herself of the idea that it was just what she had to do. They’d been trained to not think of it as murder, but ever since she’d emerged the Victor it had felt like nothing else. It was cruel and careless murder. There was nothing but monsters left now; her unease around dark places, still sometimes stopping dead in the street when she saw a familiar face that reminded her of some kind of ghost. Lyme listened to him talk, and didn’t make an indignant response until the end. But it was true, she had volunteered. She’d been seventeen, self-absorbed and full of confidence in her own sharp wits and skills. She’d thought herself to be practically immortal, until she’d opened her eyes and all she’d seen was the darkness of the arena. Having volunteered didn’t make it any easier, she expected. “And you?” Lyme asked, breaking her long silence. “Do you resent me for being a Volunteer, or just think I’m not allowed to hurt?” So this was what it was. He'd suspected, once upon a time. "On my reallllllly bad days--” I resent everyone everything, “Both. The rest of the time, neither.” She nodded slowly. “Thank you for being honest,” she said quietly. Another beat, and then she had more to say. “I’m going to be a mentor next year. That’ll be fun,” unable to stop herself from being sarcastic, Lyme had tried to turn the conversation away from where it was going. Somewhere in his head, Haymitch knew it was fucked up that I’m going to be a mentor next year counted as an upwards turn in the conversation. Good thing ‘why are people friends with me’ was something he’d given up trying to figure out while sober. Or was that bad? Haymitch made a face at nothing and no one, but answered quick enough. “My condolences and slash or congratulations.” Haymitch shifted away from the wall and started to flick his cards out of pattern and onto the floor. A pointless, soothing sort of gesture, and it kept him from giving a theatrical yawn and hanging up. He could make an effort. He could ask, casual but interested, “So, what kind of shitty advice you had so far?” “All sorts,” Diana sighed quietly. “Look, I shan’t keep you much longer if you don’t want,” already uncomfortable with the conversation, never too keen on small talk. “But if you have any advice, what would it be?” It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that she wanted to hang up. He didn’t want to admit that he liked talking to her, even if this particular conversation probably counted as painful. Hard to tell sometimes. “Lemme think.” Haymitch said, an echo of not-quite-softness slipping into his voice. He rubbed his free hand across his jaw, eyes shuttering closed as they sped across his vision, all those too clear-faces of the kids who never had a shot. The corpse talk could wait until afterwards. He counted three breaths until he could open his eyes and talk. “Don’t be afraid to manipulate them.” The tributes, the sponsors, the other Victors… Not the wisest thing to say in a conversation already rife with bad bad bad, so Haymitch kept that bit locked up. “Same as the arena, bitterheart, you nudge ‘em towards what’s best for you and yours.” “Uh-huh,” Diana murmured, unsure as to who the ‘them’ Haymitch was referring to were. She pursed her lips slightly before sighing slowly. It was difficult, and Diana rarely found herself lost for words. “Sure.” The girl muttered quietly, staring blankly ahead for a moment before snapping her head up as though distracted. “Listen, Abernathy,” she spoke, suddenly more animated in her haste to stop this strange conversation, “I’ve got to run, but I’ll see you then. Speak soon?” Speak soon was usually code for ‘not for a long time’. Funny how he could alienate people even when he didn’t mean to. Surely that took skill. “Suuuuure.” Haymitch drawled, and dropped the phone into its cradle like a stone. It fell crookedly, not at the right angle to hang up. He’d have to readjust it properly to do that. Instead, he breathed into his hand (too hot? not drunk) and stumbled up to his feet. Lyme could hang up, and the phone still wouldn’t be able to ring. |