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His clock was still ticking, which was amazing because Haymitch had given up on love years ago.
He’d lost both tributes in the blink of an eye – wiped out in the first seconds of the Games this year. The girl (her name escaped him – slipping through his mind and losing itself in a haze of alcohol and regret) had been knocked to the ground minutes after leaping from the pedestal and run through clean by a tribute from District 4. The boy had screamed, racing forward in a blind messy attempt at vengeance and was promptly beheaded by a Career.
“Well, that’s that,” Haymitch grunted and reached for a glass. A hand appeared out of nowhere and whacked him not-so-gently on the forearm. Haymitch paused and studied the hand for a moment, swaying gently on the soft cushion.
(those kids would never see comfort again, would they?)
The hand was wrapped in silk gloves, the fabric going all the way up and ending just under the elbow. Fancy slippery gloves, for a fancy slippery woman.
He raised his eyes and examined Effie Trinket, who frowned delicately at him. Her eyelashes, studded with rhinestones, caught the light of the small viewing room as she blinked once, twice. She was saying something, but Haymitch may as well have had cotton crammed in his ears for all he could hear her.
She shook her head and Haymitch had the irritating feeling he’d done something wrong. Like he was a child, getting scolded by a woman nearly a decade younger than him.
He grunted wordlessly and batted her hand away from the decanter, slopping the amber liquid all over his hands and the small side table as he poured.
“Oh, Haymitch,” Effie sighed his name and something hovered on the edge of his brain, something he should probably be paying attention to. Something, if he hadn’t been drinking since they’d sent the kids off for styling, he probably would have been able to grasp and study, turning it over and over in his head until it made sense.
But he didn’t – and it wasn’t until three days later, when Effie sobered him up by dumping a bucket of ice cold water on his head, when he came up sputtering, drenched and dripping and with a pounding headache, when he asked gruffly after the tributes and Effie just looked at him in silent disgust, that he saw the clock on his wrist had skipped ahead almost an entire year.
-
His clock, Haymitch decided, was an errant fuck-up. It skipped around so often it didn’t seem to be counting down at all. One day he’d be years away from the point of realization, then the next it would be days.
For a clock that was supposed to be ticking down to the second he fell in love with his soulmate, his seemed to have no idea how to keep proper time.
Effie had never brought his clock up, never mentioned hers. It wasn’t something that was done in polite society – but then, Haymitch had never been polite society. His was bare for the world to see. Effie kept hers wrapped in silk and bracelets and tiny gloves that ended just above the wrist so he couldn’t even see if she had a clock, let alone if it was still counting.
The table was uncomfortably silent, the meal punctuated by the scrapes and shrieks of knives and forks against porcelain dinnerware. Haymitch desperately wanted another drink, but he could feel himself sliding on the edge of a buzz and besides, Effie had glowered at him when he’d beckoned the Avox standing silently behind her for another whiskey and he wasn’t really in the mood to deal with that right now.
He couldn’t quite pinpoint what was different about this one. Maybe it was Katniss. He liked her. A lot. She’d inspired a jolt of protectiveness in the pit of his stomach that reminded him of years ago, before he’d shouldered the weight of the Games, when he’d smiled more and had people to protect.
Now he had this silent sullen girl in the braid and her watchful partner, chewing dully and staring into the crystal glassware, and he couldn’t help the bile that rose in his throat. It wasn’t fair that these children were forced to share their last meal in such an uncomfortable silence.
Two out of the four people at this table were going to be dead within the week.
The meat he was chewing on turned bland, and he swallowed painfully.
“I think—” he began but was interrupted by Katniss throwing down her silverware. It clattered against the plate, screeching metal against porcelain.
“I’m done,” she declared, swiping the back of her hand across her mouth and dragging her sticky fingers down the front of her shirt.
Effie stifled a gasp but Katniss was already up and halfway across the room.
She’s quick, Haymitch’s mind supplied quietly, strategizing almost without prompting. Peeta carefully stood up too, half a pace behind Katniss like usual.
“Thank you for the meal,” he said quietly, and turned to go. Haymitch tried not to wince. The boy was good people. Haymitch didn’t want to know the exact red of his blood.
“I never,” Effie whispered furiously, spots of color high on her cheeks. It gave her a glow, a kind of radiant emotion on a face otherwise painted, and Haymitch examined it interestedly.
“They’re kids on death’s door, sweetheart,” Haymitch muttered, and reached for his glass, realizing belatedly that it was still empty. “I don’t think dinner etiquette is the first thing on their minds.”
Effie opened her mouth, then closed it. “Still,” she said, finally, reaching for her water glass.
Haymitch rubbed a thumb along his wrist, scratching an itch that wasn’t there. The nickname had left his mouth without permission, the endearment far too familiar for two people who were so opposite.
He looked down.
His clock ticked silently. Was it closer to zero than it had been before?
Nah. Couldn’t be.
-
Against all odds, he’d gotten to keep not one, but both of those kids.
It was a fucking miracle.
-
Then there was a plan and they were running out of time and Katniss was in danger (fuck, everyone was in danger) and every time Haymitch met Effie’s eyes across the room he pictured them lifeless and empty, vacant against the reflection of the sky, and he pictured blood stark scarlet against her pale foundation and he could not let that happen.
Not to her.
His clock was dangerously close to zero these days, but Haymitch barely had time to worry about that when he had two kids with a scorn for politics to protect and a woman who wouldn’t stop slipping her way into his thoughts at night.
Who cared that he had days before love was supposed to hit him in the face with a hammer and string him up by the balls? This was war. The clock wasn’t a guarantee of happiness. It was a guarantee of location. Love still took work, and let’s face it, Haymitch wasn’t much of a prize for anyone these days.
Effie brushed her gloved fingertips along his arm as the gala swirled around them. Katniss was in the middle of the crowd, a glowing flame in an empty circle, listening carefully as Plutarch spoke in her ear as they rotated slowly on the spot.
“Are you keeping an eye on her?” Effie asked, and Haymitch looked down at the top of her head, at the distracted way she held onto his arm, her gaze restlessly jumping over the crowd, finding Katniss, then Peeta, then Katniss again. Like she couldn’t help but check on them. Like she had the same ominous feeling he did.
“Of course,” he grunted, and it struck him then, sneaky as thoughts tend to be, that he was glad Effie was there. She was familiar territory in a sea of people he didn’t really like and didn’t really know. She was an island in a sea of feathers and glitter, the face his eyes kept searching out among the crowds.
“Haymitch,” Effie began and he knew that voice. The hesitation before the steel, the straightening of the spine that meant she was about to tell him something that she was sure he’d hate.
Then Plutarch looked up over Katniss’s head and into his eyes, and Haymitch put a hand on Effie’s shoulder, fabric crinkling, and apologized, cutting her off and stepping out onto the balcony alone.
Plutarch joined him moments later and as they discussed plans and futures without discussing them, Haymitch didn’t think about his clock, or notice that it had jumped backwards in time several days.
-
Haymitch hadn’t seen the sun in days and yet even now, his clock was still ticking.
A suspicion was growing in his mind like an ugly weed whenever Haymitch allowed himself to think on it (which wasn’t often because there was just so much to do) and there wasn’t any whiskey in this entire damned compound and he’d left her behind with no information or even a goodbye so what did it matter anyway.
What the fuck did it even matter.
“Haymitch?”
He looked up. The kid in his doorway was barely eighteen – pale and skinny, washed out in the clinical lights of District 13. His sleeves were rolled up and Haymitch’s eyes flicked to the kid’s wrists without permission. They were bare – no clock for this kid. Haymich wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or a curse. Had he had one and they’d been killed? Or had he been born without?
“Yeah,” he said, gruff, realizing his pause had been too long.
“Sir, they—”
“Don’t call me sir.”
“Yes, sir, I-- er, sorry, uh, Haymitch.”
Haymitch raised an eyebrow and the kid swallowed. “They’re back. They brought a Capitol woman with them. Plutarch sent me to fetch you.”
Haymitch’s heart thudded painfully against his ribs. “Is she—?”
The kid shook his head. “She’s struggling, sir. Barely there. It’s… it’s bad.”
Haymitch was up and out of his chair before he realized he was consciously moving. “Outta my way,” he grunted, panic as fluttery in his chest as a butterfly trapped in a jar. It was Effie. It had to be.
They’d gotten to her.
(He’d left her behind. Of course they’d gotten to her.)
They were a team, she’d said, words about gold and matching and camaraderie and he’d nodded and taken the token and then used it to barter and he’d left her behind.
Haymitch left the kid in the doorway to his quarters, boots clumping heavy in the corridor as he made his way towards the sickbay. If he’d been paying attention, he’d have noticed the barely there twinge on his wrist as his clock jumped forward several hours, leaving only minutes until it hit zero. Seconds, even.
She was lying on her back in the infirmary, and Haymitch stopped with a jolt because she was barely recognizable.
Her glitter and glamor were gone – her wig removed and her hair, natural and pale, like moonlight across the pillow. Dark circles hollowed the space beneath her eyes, and the bruises mottled her skin in bursts of sickly color.
His heart stopped, thudded and twisted, and he didn’t realize he was tipping until hands gripped his shoulders, tight, hauling him to his feet again.
“Haymitch, she’s alive. Alive, Haymitch. Breathe.”
Plutarch guided him to the chair by the bed and shoved him into it, speaking low and quick, filling him in on the details. They’d gone back for Peeta and Johanna, and found Effie incidentally. She’d flatlined twice on the way back, but they’d kept her alive long enough to be transferred to medical in 13.
“She might not make it, Haymitch,” Plutarch said softly, and Haymitch felt his breath catch.
She had to live. She had to. If she didn’t, if she was another casualty in this god-forsaken war then he’d...
Then he’d what? Lose the only other thing that had grown to matter to him? Lose a part of himself he didn’t know he had? Lose his heart, the only thing that had kept him going through those shitty fucking years where he sent children off to die and drank himself half to death and Effie had just sat there patiently with him and—
Oh.
Oh.
Haymitch looked down at his wrist and watched the final second tick away to zero.
So that was it. Somewhere along the way, in between the arguments and the drink and the glitter on his clothes and in his hair and under his nails, in between the rolled eyes and the quirk of brightly colored lips in the barest hints of a smile, in between the worry and fear in the gloved fingers pressing tight against his arm, he’d fallen in love with Effie Trinket.
And then he’d left her behind.
Haymitch settled back into the chair and crossed his boots one over the other, folding his arms over his chest (anything to try and keep his heart from breaking his ribs open and making off down the corridor) and resolved himself to wait until she’d woken up.
Because he could see her wrist from here, could see the bare skin and the row of zeroes imprinted innocently beneath a puffed up bruise, and wondered when it was she’d figured it out.
How long she’d known.
And why she hadn’t breathed a word to him.
He didn’t deserve her, no. And she sure as hell deserved better than him, but…
But there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot left for him in this life and Haymitch would be damned if he didn’t give this the best shot he’d ever given anything before.
Now all she had to do was wake up.