jillian reed 🍺 haymitch abernathy (cantankard) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2018-08-30 14:34:00 |
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Entry tags: | * jach, c: jillian reed |
WHO: Haymitch Abernathy.
WHERE: The Capitol.
WHAT: The winners of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games.
RATING: Mild.
STATUS: narrative; complete.
Normally, but this point in the games, Haymitch Abernathy has well and fully checked out. Any other year, he’d be locked in his room with more than enough alcohol to make him sick and well on his way to passing out. That’s because his tributes are almost always dead by this time. He can’t remember the last time a District 12 tribute made it into the top five, let alone two in the top three. But here they are. Katniss and Peeta had kept one another alive in the arena, and now with the District Four girl gone, they only had to outlast Cato. One more death and they could go home. Or so the story went, anyway. Haymitch believed that bullshit story about two tributes being allowed to win about as far as he could spit. But even so, Katniss stood a real shot at winning this, and so for the first time in a long time, Haymitch stayed sober. They’d never really get along, he and Katniss. But they understood each other, and he owed her this. As her mentor. As someone who had lived through the same goddamned hell she was experiencing now. He watches as she fires her last arrow into Cato with grim satisfaction. Atta, Girl, he thinks. He eyes the flask of whiskey sitting just outside of his reach. His hand twitches, but he tells himself no. And somehow really means it. Claudius Templesmith’s voice booms through the arena and Haymitch’s television speakers. They’re revoking the partner rule. They’re going to make her kill Peeta. Bastards. He knew it. He watches her face as the truth finally dawns on her. She’s been played. They’ve all been played. All pieces in the games. What’s left of his own calloused, beat up heart breaks for her then. She’ll win this. He’s certain Peeta will make sure of that. But she’ll end up just as shattered as the rest of them. Unable to ever really leave the arena again. He reaches for the flask. Then a flash of movement on the screen catches his eye and causes him to freeze. The damned berries. She’s poured them into both of their hands and the pair of them are holding them out for all the cameras to see. Haymitch grins darkly. She’s found a way to use their own games against them. Just like he had. He pulls his hand back from the alcohol and watches. Just as the berries reach Katniss’s lips, trumpets blare through the speakers. Claudius’s frantic voice yells out “Stop! Stop! Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the victors of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark! I give you - the tributes of District Twelve!” In the days that follow, he stays irritatingly sober. It helps with the shouting. Which he does a lot of as he bounces back and forth between Peeta and Katniss, looking out for them in the snakepit of the Capitol while they recover. He leaves the banquet planning and details to Effie. Which is just as well. His talents are put to better use swearing at doctors who want to surgically alter Katniss’s thin, malnourished frame. They finally release her and Haymitch’s weathered old face cracks into a smile as she launches herself toward him. “Nice job, Sweetheart.” And he means it. But he’s afraid for her now too. He knows what it means to go to war with the Capitol and she just made them the laughing stock of Panem. But he knows, deep in his gut, that he will continue to do whatever is necessary to protect this girl. To be the someone in her corner that he never had. |