Half-AU, half-canon. Odd sections are canon, even sections an AU where Katniss won the 74th Hunger Games. Katniss/Haymitch, background Katniss/Gale.

i. how it is.

It starts with Katniss and Rue's four note whistle. It starts with Katniss, her look of determination borne through terror, and her cautious gaze and smile borne of the weight and responsibility of love.

Even if Haymitch was to say it for some godforsaken reason, he wouldn't say it in so many words. But that's what it feels like. Katniss is deadly and frightened and smart as hell and oblivious, and it's all something approaching, dare he say it, endearing.

(She looks nothing like Mariam, no shining blonde hair or easy, wry smile or subtle body language that spoke louder than words could ever hope to. But she has the same gaze that cuts through you like a knife, the same teeth-gritting realism, and sudden sentimental streak. So when Katniss is braiding flowers into Rue's hair not long after loosing that arrow, it hits him all at once: he's teenage again, looking down at her pale and mutilated body and saying yes, that's her as he tries to remember how to breathe, to live.

He hasn't ached like this in so long. And that ache hasn't reached out to anyone to sate it, until now.)

ii. what might have been.

The truth is that, no matter what Haymitch had said to the sponsors and the other mentors, he had no fucking clue how the 74th Hunger Games would end, or what would become of his tributes. He knew that Katniss stood a better chance than anyone 12 had ever seen. What he really didn't know, what he never could have guessed, was how the tale of the Baker's Boy and the Poor Seam Girl on Fire would end.

One day in the arena they were close, they were gentle and doomed and lovestruck, too pure and naive to be subjected to all of this, no matter the body count they accrued between knives and bows and bombs and trackerjackers. The next, she turned him away from the view of the girl's dead body, and took the nightlock berries from him without a word. She crushed one between her fingers, dropped what was left, and drew her fingers along her lips.

In the replay, she doesn't look pleased, or wicked. She doesn't look determined or certain or anything that easy to read at all. Her eyes are hollow, her face is blank, and her smile when she turns back to Peeta is just brief enough to not be too telling. He kisses her, sincerely, desperate, knowing this is the end, knowing it will come down to something needing to be done, and maybe he knows. Haymitch wouldn't be surprised to find out he knew all along.

Katniss barely speaks as they sit down after, while they're shucking nuts, and sits, still as death, as Peeta falters, stammers, sways, and coughs up blood. Then he says her name, over and over again, and she takes his hands, knits her fingers with his, only releasing him when he falls limply, just as desperately hacking blood up to try to get air. When it's silent, she reaches over to kiss him, but grazes her lips against his cheek instead, and strokes blood from his lip like a doting mother. The cannon sounds; she sits up, her face impassive, more than unreadable, and she deliberately smears the blood onto her lips.

She pauses long enough for the camera to get a long, lingering shot, then she goes off to hunt the last of them down.

When she shoves the blond Career tribute to the mutts, she doesn't move or flinch at the sound of the cannon ringing out once more.

"The victor of the 74th Hunger Games!" they announce on the video. "Miss Katniss Everdeen!"

So, with all that, it's not even slightly a surprise when she shows up at his door the first day in Victor's Village.

They drink, not exchanging a word besides a cursory greeting and what could arguably be called "unpleasantries", and the more drink he puts in her, the more she broods worse than he has in years. He doesn't know if he has the energy or the will to put that much work into brooding anymore, though.

Finally, she breaks the silence. "Do you hate me?" she asks, somehow both cold and brash. "For what I did?"

"You did what you did," Haymitch says, dismissive, focusing on pouring his next drink without spilling a precious drop. "Who cares what I think?"

"I'm stuck with you for the rest of my life," Katniss says. "We're the only two fucking victors in 12. I care what you think."

Whatever. He doesn't care. "You shouldn't."

Oh, now she's frustrated. Great. "Why won't you answer me?"

"Because I'm not going to make the decision for you about whether you should feel like shit about what you did," Haymitch says, sharp, a little pissed. "You're a grownup. You can do that yourself."

"I'm not a grownup, Haymitch, I'm sixteen years old," she snaps.

"If you're old enough to fuck those Capitol assholes, Katniss, you're old enough to deal with killing Peeta Mellark," he says; he's holding nothing back and she knows it and she looks at him with plain hate but she knows he's telling the truth. "What's the difference between killing him and killing the others? Tell me that."

"I haven't ever - done - not yet." Katniss looks away from him, accepts the bottle from him, and drinks straight from it. "And P - " She cuts herself off, finally saying, "he trusted me."

"And now your family will survive and your new boyfriend with all the tesserae won't wind up dying in the Games like your other 'boyfriend'," Haymitch says, airquotes and all. "So are you sorry?"

"It's not that simple," Katniss argues, but makes a face and then goes on before he can interject, "No. No. No, I'm not fucking sorry. And that makes me a terrible person."

"It happened," he says. He feels a dull ache of regret, of longing, twinging like an old wound on a rainy day. "And it's your fault but it's not your fault because you know who the real enemy is, don't you?"

She looks at him, measured, then up at the house, and she nods, shortly.

"You're right," Haymitch says. He's wondering again, for the first time in at least ten years, what the point was in surviving, in killing all those tributes, in trying to save Maysilee, in winning. You're dead either way, inside or out. "It's not simple."

She looks down, at that. Then she takes a long swig from the bottle and hands it off without looking at him. "He's not my boyfriend," she says, sardonically.

He laughs, much the same, and drinks.

(That's how it starts.)

iii. how it goes.

She's trying on the wedding dresses before doing a shoot for those Capitol sons of bitches. Tailoring or something. Peeta isn't there, instead on the other side of Victor's Village at work on his painting. It's 10 AM so Haymitch is only hungover and also slightly drunk, because he promised Katniss he'd be there to make fun (but not too much fun; this is Cinna, after all) of the dresses to make her feel less nervous about all of this.

They won't marry, not really, Haymitch thinks, as they button up the back of another dress while Katniss stands ramrod straight. The toast won't even crisp at the edges. It's all a joke, an elaborate joke. Even if Panem wasn't collapsing - especially if - it would never happen. Not like this. Not like the Capitol thinks it is or wants it to be, or how Peeta hopes it could be one day.

"You look like a cupcake," Haymitch pronounces.

"Haymitch," Effie chides. "The team has worked very hard on these dresses!"

"And I'm sure in the Capitol they like playing bakery dressup," Haymitch starts, "but…"

"Don't forget, this is a Capitol wedding, Haymitch," Katniss says, neutrally, and approaches the mirror to appraise herself in this one. His eyebrows raise; he never thought she'd concede the point, but then she speaks again, abruptly: "This is the last one today."

"But there's only one more," Effie wheedles, hurrying up to her in concern. "You could have the weekend to yourself, you and Peeta! Wouldn't that be lovely?"

Katniss doesn't answer immediately, which is probably a good thing, so Haymitch speaks up. "You've been doing this for two hours. She's got to be as sick of taffeta as I am. If not more."

"We only used taffeta the once," Octavia starts, looking a little wounded.

"I don't want to try on any more dresses," Katniss says sharply, then shrinks away from herself in the mirror, as everyone else falls silent. She turns back to Cinna. "Can you unbutton this? I'm going to change."

"Shall I tell Peeta you're on your way?" Effie asks her, and Katniss doesn't answer, doesn't look at her. "Well! So much to do! Cinna, everyone, we'll meet at lunch to look over the designs for the shoot, don't you think? Lovely work, everyone, brava!"

Katniss is still as Cinna undoes the back of her dress, and they speak quietly. Haymitch pours himself another drink, and watches the trail of Katniss's dress snake across the room as she stalks towards her bedroom.

The prep team is talking about nothing. Cinna and Effie are discussing something in hushed tones. Bluntly, Haymitch is not drunk enough for this. He's not drunk enough to not picture Katniss trying to smile in a wedding dress as she walks up a plush carpet, surrounded by a gawking crowd of Capitol admirers and strangers, towards Peeta, who in any other situation she might have well and truly loved, and promising fidelity even though the Capitol would let half the city fuck her given the right amount of cash on the nail.

There's no honor amongst Capitol folk. And this will be a Capitol wedding, and they'll be Capitol people, from that day on.

He takes his drink and goes after her.

Katniss is slipping the dress over her shoulders when he looks inside. She sees him reflected in the mirror and hesitates. "What?" she asks.

"I'm sorry," Haymitch says, and drinks.

"For what?" She doesn't seem to know what to do, right now. He doesn't, either.

"For this." He gestures with his glass at the world in general. "All this shit."

"It's better than the alternative," she says. "You said. It's…" She doesn't seem to want to say it, and he can't blame her. "It's the only way."

"That doesn't mean it doesn't suck," he points out.

"There's nothing we can do," she retorts, more than a little hopelessly, and turns towards him, her expression as close to pained as he's ever seen it. "I don't want to dwell on it, okay?" She turns back and slips out of the dress to send it pooling around her feet, leaving her in a thin slip.

(In that instant, he thinks of Johanna Mason; the invitation to her seventh floor room to discuss alliances; the expensive lingerie she wore alone with nothing approaching shame; the departing Capitol man with hair the same brown and green of the trees in 7, the same shade as the new bruises she casually rubbed a salve into as they spoke of strategies.

It's worse to think about Katniss being whored out. Not just because he knows her well, or because he's her mentor, or because he thinks Johanna deserves it more for whatever reason. It's that, no matter how well Katniss hides it, she was broken long before she ever entered the Games. She might have glued herself back together, but all it would take is one more blow to shatter her permanently.

He's still not sure she isn't already shattered.)

She's moved to gather up the dress to leave it on the bed, when she sees him again. "Haymitch," she says, and startles him out of his reverie and contemplation of his glass. She's staring at him. "Everything okay?"

"Is it ever?" he asks rhetorically.

Katniss doesn't seem to know what to do with that, or this conversation at all. He's clearly blindsided her. He should just leave. He should. "I'm going to change," she says.

"I just wanted you to know," Haymitch says, slowly, raising his glass to her, "that you're going to be a great mentor." He drinks. "That's all."

"Thank you," she says, uncertainly polite as ever. "I'll see you later?"

He makes himself nod, and leaves. The image of Katniss cornered and violated still haunts him, and he's too tired to fight it.

The drink will scare it off, for now.

iv. what happens if their poison takes hold.

When Haymitch stops by for what Katniss has sarcastically called "a hangover brunch," he walks past Gale, again, who is in a huff, again. Before witnessing Katniss and Gale and their bullshit, he really didn't think that grown fucking people, even if their late teens to early twenties, would do things like storm out of rooms and slam doors like pissed-off teenagers, but he has been proven mightily wrong.

"Don't walk away from me when I'm talking to you," Katniss is shouting from a hallway, and Haymitch sighs heavily and moves out of the way when Gale doubles back. He leaves when Gale starts hissing at her about how this isn't her, this will never be her, because somewhere in this damn house, there's food, and coffee, and no insane people.

He makes a point of pouring some an awful black market excuse for Irish cream into his coffee. When he takes a shot of it, he practically spits it up. "Fuck," he swears.

"Oh, language, Haymitch," Katniss says as she stalks back into the room. "What if Effie hears?"

"Effie knows better than to bother us this early. We're not even close to planning for the big seventy-six." Haymitch looks down into his coffee. "This is paint. This shit you got us is basically paint in a liquor bottle."

"Well I wasn't trying to poison you," Katniss says, "not this time, anyway. Sorry."

His eyebrows lift. Yeah, that's dark even for him. Then again, they had to put up with last year's victory tour, with the arrogant kid from District 4 who killed three of 12's four tributes in the Quarter Quell, and Katniss did not take losing all four kids very well at all.

That is to say, drinking with Haymitch, fucking her boyfriend, screaming, regressing to a child with her not-so-little-anymore sister, waking up with screaming nightmares, killing the shit out of a punching bag, repeat. For five months.

Honestly it's getting a little exhausting. But he's too drained to care, these days. Besides, he wouldn't admit it but it's good to have company, even if Katniss doesn't completely get it yet.

Katniss is cutting up a loaf of bread. "I'm guessing you heard him," she says as she saws away at it.

"Take it easy with that bread," Haymitch says dryly, pouring himself another cup of coffee free of the terrible excuse for liquor.

"I'm going to visit the Capitol this weekend. That's why I asked about Effie. She's decided to come with me. Probably for the PR. I really don't care." When he looks back at her, she's buttering her bread as savagely as a person possibly can.

"You see," he says, gesturing grandly with his drink, "how glamorous and exciting a Victor's life is now. How freeing it is to be rich and famous."

She glares up at him. "I know. I know," she protests. "And if he doesn't like it, if he can't get over what, what I am now, Haymitch, I don't know what to do - "

"Put him out of his misery," Haymitch says, in the same deliberately sharp tone as her poison joke earlier. It hits her hard, but she just glares at him. "Send him on his way. He'll find a good Seam girl to marry. You can support his family if you want, you don't have to be fucking him."

"So I just give up on being a human being?" She's still again. He waits for her to go on, because she's obviously thinking, overthinking. (Any thinking is overthinking, about some things.) "It's not the same for me," she says finally. "You know that."

"I know what you're going to the Capitol to do," he says; she stares down at her half-arranged plate. "And I don't like it either but you do what you have to do to get by. And get others by."

"I know that. I know. You keep saying that, I get it," Katniss insists, all that Girl On Fire spirit back, but obviously fueled by desperation. "I don't know why it's not a - a package deal. He knew I wasn't normal even before I went into the arena, he knew I, I could be this - and what if he'd been reaped? I wouldn't judge him! Why would I?"

"You say that," Haymitch says, pointedly. "But only victors get it. That's the deal. Fame and fortune and no one fucking understands so you're alone."

"I'm not alone," Katniss snaps off, and her face is all flushed. "I - I have my family. They understand, I have - "

"Right," Haymitch retorts, cutting her off and looking away. There's got to be some food he can stomach here.

"Haymitch," she shouts at him.

"What the hell do you want now," he says without missing a beat, tossing down some coffee and grimacing.

"I have you! That's what I was going to say, I have you. Don't be such an asshole, okay? Let me finish talking for once, it's not like I talk a lot." She throws herself down into a chair, all sullen and embarrassed, apparently, when he looks up at the table where she's sitting.

He serves himself some hashbrowns and sausages, and sits a chair away from her.

"They have lipstick for me," she says, just loudly enough to be heard, like she doesn't want to say it at all. "For my… appearances. It's red."

The blood. No one's going to forget that any time soon. And he can just picture the Capitol freaks getting off on the idea of her blood-red lips around their cocks or on their tits.

He looks up at her; it's the most vulnerable he's seen her since the week after the Quarter Quell ended. "Girl on Fire's going to paint the town red," he says. "Typical."

Katniss swallows a piece of bread and coughs, valiantly trying and failing not to smile. "Remember what I said about being an asshole?" she says.

"Yeah, good luck with that," he says, dismissively, and offers to pour some of the decent liquor into her coffee.

It's sick, of course. All their jokes, all their references, the way they dwell on it. But whistling past the graveyard, gallows humor, whatever you call it, sometimes it's the only break from the unending parade of death and horribleness.

(That night, he dreams that she crawls into his bed and wakes him with a kiss. There's no pretending, nothing fake, between them once she drops her nightgown to the side of the bed and they stop talking, thinking, anything but feeling. There's just respite.

Then, he wakes up.)

v. what he knows shouldn't ever be, but still is.

Haymitch doesn't even really know why he bothers telling Peeta anything anymore. The kid is way too smart for his own good. Well, okay; he doesn't tell him about the grand plan, because there's no trusting him with that. He's so stupid over Katniss there's no chance he won't let it spill in some situation that would inevitably come up, and they're all being as closely monitored now as they were back in the arena.

Other than that, though, Peeta's as sharp as a tack. He has to make sure, though, so he asks anyway. "You know what you have to do," he checks.

Peeta shrugs. "I have an idea," he says.

Haymitch isn't blind; he knows that Peeta is just as fucked up from the Games as Katniss is. But hell if the kid isn't pushing right through it just to protect his ladylove or whatever, at least for show. He'd be more impressed if he didn't know that for Peeta, it's not a farce. It's not a play. It's not for the rebellion or for sponsors.

Peeta really loves her that much. Even though there's practically three inches of psychological glass between Katniss Everdeen and the world, Peeta still sees her there, and still tries.

Haymitch would be jealous of the effort, the situation, the naivete, if he weren't already resigned to the fact that one axe throw decades ago doomed him to die alone, rich, and drunk.

"Don't tell me. Don't," he tells Peeta. "I trust you, for some goddamn reason. You and Caesar Flickerman, if you get out of this alive you could make a mint just - "

"Haymitch," Peeta interrupts him, abruptly, and goes on, practical and pained all at once. "I'm - I'm not going to."

"I know," Haymitch says, and, dammit, his throat catches. "Don't go throwing your life away, though. I'm serious, at least put some strategy into the damn thing."

"I always do," Peeta confirms. He glances at the door, and Haymitch shrugs to let him go and dabble in some independent bartending, but there he is, hesitating. "Thank you," he says, with painstaking sincerity that cuts into Haymitch in the way it always does.

He looks up at Peeta only for a second. "For what?" he asks, playing dumb.

"You know what," Peeta says. For a moment Haymitch thinks the kid's going to do something dumb and sentimental, but he just smiles wryly, sadly. "I would have trusted you, too. To do it. To keep her safe."

Wow, there are so many levels on which he doesn't want to think about this. It's like some sort of whirring machine his daddy used down in the mines just started in his abdomen and his mouth is dry and his heart's panicking and his throat is closing and his stomach is twisting.

"Yeah, well," he finally says, when Peeta turns to leave. He pours his drink. "Thank you for making sure I don't have to."

Maybe he would sacrifice Peeta for Katniss. Maybe. But it's not something he can think about. It's not something that comes from the little bit of good remaining in him, and it's not fair to anyone, especially him.

He gets really, really drunk instead. It dulls it. It dulls everything, and drowns out everything in favor of whistling mining songs in the dark.

vi. how a man with an axe and a girl on fire start the blaze together.

By the time the reaping comes around for the 80th Hunger Games, he and Katniss have whipped up something that almost resembles a Career training system. The thing is that they're still stuck in District 12, and Katniss spends a lot of time in the Capitol, and Haymitch is not nearly as much help as he could be at his age with the actual physical training bullshit, besides telling kids how badly they're doing or how likely they are to survive one day in the arena if they volunteer.

Amazingly, they have three kids from training in the last two years who weren't reaped prematurely and might actually stand a chance in the arena. Their parents are either all for it or don't give a fuck, too, so it's less guilt-inducing for Katniss, who has heard all the horror stories from Enobaria and the other Career tributes.

It never really surprised Haymitch, but then, Panem has been a blatant asshole to him for a long time. The "hooray, Hunger Games" mindset isn't really a surprise when you think about it.

They're prepping in Victor's Village. Gale hasn't been around for two weeks, but it was even more conspicuous last night, at what Katniss has dubbed "the Last Supper" before they get shipped off to the Capitol to try not to be partially responsible for the deaths of the home team.

Effie has long since given up on cleaning Haymitch up any more than giving him a new outfit, one way less ostentatious than anything Katniss wears, including the one she's zipping up now. At least this one will be harder for some Capitol asshole to take off. "Still can't believe you willingly wear that shit. Why not show up in regular clothes?"

"This isn't that bad," Katniss points out.

"It's a dress. You don't wear dresses unless you're - " Shit. He sees the change in her face, in his gut, and he decides to shut the hell up about it. "In the Capitol," he finishes.

"It's a big deal," she says, and looks at him pointedly. "We have plans."

Oh, Jesus Christ. She knows. The corner of her mouth quirks up at the look on his face, and he has to pause to figure out how to word this shit so that any bugs in the house won't automatically transmit any such plans to Snow himself. Finally, after using fixing his tie as an excuse, he comes up with, "So you were talking to Finnick about our little plan. Planning on getting revenge on 4 for the Quarter Quell?"

Katniss nods, just slightly, and waves the inquiring stylist away, putting the simple makeup on herself. (It covers the dark circles under her sleepless eyes and makes her look young and vibrant with hungry, curious eyes, but he knows her better than all that.) "It's not about revenge, Haymitch. It's about winning."

Haymitch nods back, and looks away, shoving his unhelpful thoughts away with a savage huff and ensuring they'll stay the hell away by grabbing a bottle. "I'll see you out there."

It's up in the air. There's no guarantee. But Mali Chaplin and Tally Marsh - both their kids, their Careers - volunteer, and they embrace on the stage before anyone can separate them.

If the mentors have anything to say about it, nothing will.

"Why don't you ever go to the sponsors?" Tally asks him at a dinner in the Capitol suite. "It's always Katniss."

"Because Haymitch is a jerk," Mali says, and grins disarmingly. She's going to get along great with Finnick, Haymitch thinks. "Right?"

Because Haymitch doesn't want to fuck them and definitely none of them want to fuck Haymitch, is what he's thinking, but he's sure as hell not going to say it. "You're lucky. You could have Johanna Mason as a mentor. She's much worse than me."

"I actually don't mind you," Tally says, and something about his easy charm, his charisma, his sincerity, instantly reminds him of Peeta. Six years of living with all of it, with her, rushes back at him, and he's definitely not drunk enough for this.

"That," he says, a moment later, "is a real compliment. Excuse me, I'm going to the bar."

"Oh, newsflash," Mali says dryly, and starts eating before Haymitch can chide her for filling up on food before the Games.

Mali and Tally make an excuse about going over knots, but it's bullshit and they're probably making out. Whatever, at least this time it's real. He can't think about that too hard. When he does, he doesn't have the will to keep drinking until he passes out, because he wants to be sober enough to talk to Katniss, to keep her attention and not have her wave him the hell away like he's just some stylist or camera guy. He wants to be sober enough to understand her but not feel this.

Katniss shows up looking exactly the way she left, which must have taken a lot of damn work in a hotel bathroom, and stops at seeing Haymitch resting on the couch. "What?" she asks, on guard already.

Of course she knows. "My room or yours?" he asks.

There's a flicker of recognition in her eyes, and she already doesn't like where she's thinking this is heading. "Oh, Haymitch. I always knew you were a romantic."

"Oh, Katniss," he imitates back at her, irritated. "Are you too busy? Too tired?"

"I'm doing what I have to do," she snaps, softly. "For these kids, for all of us. You taught me that, did you forget?"

"I know that." Haymitch is nauseous again. He's not drunk enough; it's starting to get to him. "Yours or mine?"

"Mine," Katniss says, swiftly, and turns to go. He follows her into her suite, and shuts the door behind him. "What the hell is this about?"

"This can't go wrong," he says, steadily. "This is a solid plan."

"I know, I helped you make it," she says, impatient.

He tries not to get any more annoyed, too, but it's difficult. "It's not the first time anyone's tried it."

Then, and only then, she hears what he's actually saying. She tenses. "So?" she says sharply. "It'll work this time."

"I hope so," Haymitch says, acidic.

"It wasn't a plan last time," Katniss fires back, and gestures Haymitch over to her side with a quick gesture. "You just sprung it on me, and I just had to guess, and - "

He rolls his eyes at her, and unzips her dress, leaning to speak directly into her ear, for maximum impact. "It became a plan. One we couldn't trust you with because back then you were a real person."

"Like you've been a real person in the last thirty years," she says, without missing a beat, but she's obviously on the defensive. "Haymitch, you smell like shitty vodka."

He laughs; he can smell the sweat and perfume on her from here. "Have to get it when I can. I don't visit the Capitol as often as you."

"Someone has to pull the weight in this relationship," she says, and looks up at him, still angry and wounded, but vulnerable in a different way: there, right there, is the Katniss who sang songs and braided flowers into Rue's hair, the one he thought was long gone.

The dress pools around her ankles, revealing nothing he hasn't seen before. But it's different now. When he turns her face to his, there's a challenge in her eyes. He meets it, and kisses her.

He's thought before that maybe there would be a way to keep her from being a Capitol whore. Now, touching her, feeling her, hearing her and tasting her, he knows that she's forever changed. She's like him. There's no way to change what they are.

(No. There's one way. It's a gamble, but it could work.)

The point is, this, this fuck, it could never have been anything but this. There's no happy ending, there won't be a moment where Katniss will decide that Haymitch is someone she could love, or one where Haymitch won't hate himself for being a part of what she is now and for his desperation to keep her there. This is a victor's act, a desperate fuck, a mockingjay's song of hatred and sorrow and loneliness, sung to anyone who'll listen just to try to drown out the sound of Panem around them.

Their mockingjay's song is eighty years in the making, known by heart by every victor. When he's taking in the scent of her hair as they rest (she lies awake, breathing in time with him, silent), he thinks of the teenagers across the suite from them; he thinks of force fields and axes, of kisses stolen in dark caves, and wonders if that song really could end.

vii. in which getting what you want would be the worst thing for everyone.

It's an overstatement to say Haymitch hasn't hated himself and everyone else this much ever before. But it's fucking overwhelming. The plan was to save Katniss no matter what, no matter what happened to Peeta, because she's the goddamn Mockingjay, not that Peeta knew that. Haymitch, on the other hand, knew this all going in. He knew, he basically sacrificed Peeta for Katniss, and he should be sorry.

But he's not. Not as sorry as he should be, anyway.

Finnick tries to tell him it's not his fault. He's probably talking more to himself than to Haymitch. The thing is, they took Annie from Finnick. They took Peeta from Katniss, from the Mockingjay, or that's what everyone says out loud.

But Peeta was as good as dead the moment he volunteered, and he knew it. The Quarter Quell was all one grand tragic romantic gesture for Peeta, and Haymitch hates himself for sort of hating Peeta for it, because now Peeta's worse than dead and Katniss is suffering under the weight of it all, the unbearable knowing, and wanting more than anything to have him back and make it up to him.

Now she's a mockingjay, the Mockingjay, perched on Coin's finger, desperately parroting anything she can bear to say in hopes that she'll eventually hear Peeta's voice again.

And watching her struggle to live, to care, to do what's expected of her, knowing Peeta might be as good as dead, feeling responsible, dead herself, alone; that's where it ends.