Statement of Intent: If you follow Screams, I'll be updating during the upcoming winter holiday (fingers crossed!). I participated in NaNoWriMo this year, with the intent of finishing/at the very least continuing that fic, and now I just have to edit everything together and make it look like a real narrative. So it's half-written and on its way! (finally) This fic is your "I'm Sorry Be Back Soon" gift.

In the meantime, after watching Catching Fire, I had a lot of Hayniss feels that I had to get out. This is a little plotbunny that hopped into my brain after dwelling on my feelings of anger for their not showing Haymitch's Games or backstory. Mwah, and thanks for reading.

Also: This is me disclaiming any role you might think I have in the Hunger Games franchise. Not making money over here, just interest on student loans.

Meaning.

He sat slumping on the couch, staring at the telescreen, immobile. It was that time of year again; the heat of summer was upon District Twelve, portending the imminent season of the Hunger Games. This year was a little different, however. As it was the 75th year ADD, there was the added treat of the announcement of the upcoming Quarter Quell.

Haymitch remembered with painful clarity where he'd been when the last Quell was announced. He had just arrived home from school, the last day of classes before the summer, when his mother told him cover the telescreen.

"Why?" he'd asked. It wasn't like she hadn't done this before; sometimes his mother seemed embattled by the turn their lives had taken since his dad took off and hadn't come back. Sometimes she liked the house quiet, noiseless; sometimes she left the house altogether, leaving Haymitch in charge of his younger brother; and sometimes she liked to sit in front of the fire with her sons at her side, stroking their hair and staring into the flames. So that day, when she'd told him to cover the device, Haymitch had taken an old, woolen blanket from the couch and draped it over the telescreen. He'd thought nothing of it, not until the Reaping began.

"Today is just not a good day, honey," his mother had replied as she stood at the stove, looking more weary than usual, stirring the pot of broth they'd be eating for supper.

He'd replayed that scene so many times in his head, trying to find meaning in it. Meaning in missing the announcement for the Quarter Quell he'd been Reaped for. Meaning behind his mothers actions, whether they were purposeful or if she was just tired, her actions some trick of fate. Searching, too, for its meaning in her being killed in 12 when he'd survived a Hunger Games like no Hunger Games ever before. Because, at the time, he'd thought that things like that had to happen for a reason, they just had to.

He felt the urge to get up now, to drape a thick, badly woven woolen blanket over the device in his own house, stopping the projection of image if not of sound as he watched the telescreen flicker to life.

His stomach clenched, as did his jaw, even after all these years.

As projected on the dingy wall, Snow stood on his usual balcony overlooking the Capitol Terrace. As a rule, any reminder of the Games was horrible, which is why Haymitch had turned to alcohol to erase some of it. However, this year he didn't try to deaden it. He was on the couch without a bottle, looking for meaning again. It was the next Quarter Quell, after all, so if there was ever going to be a meaning, maybe it would present itself now. That's when President Snow made the announcement. The announcement that forced Haymitch to consider a possibility he thought he'd never have to consider again.

"...As a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female Tributes will be reaped from the existing pool of Victors."

Haymitch couldn't help but let out a dry, rough-edged scoff at it nonetheless. Dry, because his mouth had gone cotton-dry at the utterance of words, of the impossibility becoming reality: he might have to go through another Games. Wasn't the whole appeal of winning a Games the guarantee that you'd never have to enter another one?

Though his eyes were still watching the screen, they no longer saw Snow or the Capitol Terrace or anything else being projected; instead, he saw a rush of images, of the most beautiful Arena he'd ever seen in his short life at the age of sixteen; a cannon blasting, him running; running to find a flock of pink birds with razor-sharp beaks assailing a girl collapsed on the ground, of gripping her hand so tightly, of pleading with someone who probably didn't exist to help her, save her, though he knew it was too late; of his hands, bloody, clutched to his stomach, the images now coming to him streaked with dashes of reds and yellows, spots of black, the sensations still so real, of falling to his side near the edge of a cliff, of ducking his head just enough to miss the toss of an axe, of the girl Tribute breathing hard enough for him to hear over the buzzing in his ears, of watching her stand there, standing there, standing there, a look of victory on her face until, from behind him came a whoosh and then an axe, flying back through the air….

Of the Tributes, 48 of them, that he had tried to observe, to learn, and keep straight during training, filing through his head with the sounding of cannons; the people, no the kids, he had tried to kill and not get killed by in the Arena….

And so he was immobile, slumped on the cushions of his couch long after the screen had gone blank. He was so deep that he barely even registered when the front door of his house clattered open, banging against the wall of the foyer. Barely even registered the figure in an oversized, dark-leather coat and braid stumbled in through the doorway. He did recognize its form, though, and shot up out of his slouch, out of his seat, as she turned, and, seeing him, propelled herself into the room.

Well damn. He'd forgotten about her, about both his fellow Victors entirely, because he was too caught up in his own memories. But now that he thought about it, he couldn't even begin to imagine what she had to be feeling right now, her own Arena not even a year behind her.

"Haymitch," she practically sobbed out his name when she caught sight of him. "Make it all stop, please, make it stop."
So she was seeing it all, too.

She stumbled up to him and he put his arms out to stop her from falling onto him, but she was all drunken motion and they became a human tangle.

"Woah, slow down there, sweetheart," Haymitch sputtered, his voice crackling, after getting a whiff of the air she was breathing. "How much've you had to drink?" He had half a notion to think it was funny, her with booze on her breath instead of him for once.

Instead of an answer though, he gets a pair of lips smashing down on his, hard and sloppy. It stops him cold in his tracks.

Hm. He's been here before. This had been him, once. After mentoring his first Games, he just couldn't take it anymore. He already felt responsible for the deaths of the 47 Tributes from his own Games, the deaths of his family and his girl, and now he was going to be responsible for two more deaths every year of his life? That was when he'd started turning to alcohol to solve his problems in the first place, coached into it by other Mentors, rationalizing it by seeing it all over the Capitol.

But it was a different story for her. She didn't even get a break, didn't get to spend her first year as a Victor mentoring two kids to their deaths. No, her first year as a Victor, she was going back into the Arena, the thing that had nearly torn her apart the last go-around.

"Sweetheart, slow down," he repeats, lacking all gumption as a sadness creeps into his voice. He tries to hold her at arms length, but she's fighting him.
"Make me forget," she mumbles before grabbing at him, getting the first fistful of fabric she can find, and pushing herself on him once more.

He knows what she wants. She wants to be angry. She wants to hurt. She wants to spend a few small moments, whatever she can get, tossed into another world where thinking isn't allowed, where she can numb her thoughts and simply be, physically.

He knew what she wanted, but he wasn't going to give that to her. Haymitch knew what he, at 17, hurt and confused and disillusioned and stabbed in the back, what he needed back then. So he offered that to Katniss now.

She was biting at his lip, trying to elicit a response from him, but instead of matching her gusto, Haymitch pulled his limbs from hers. Placing a hand on her cheek, he guided her face away from his slightly. So he could kiss her properly.

He did so slowly, and with a tenderness he didn't remember being able to produce. The kiss lingered, longer than he'd first planned it to, but it clearly had an effect on Katniss. Slowly, she stopped her slobbering and let herself be kissed by her Mentor, slowly, softly, deeply. Kissed like someone cared.

Her eyes blinked open slowly. They were laden with tears, swimming when she whispered a raspy, "Haymitch."

"You don't have to be afraid, not when I'm here," he answered, brushing a fistful of loose strands of hair behind her ear. Barely any of it stayed out of her face, but Haymitch half-smiled anyway.

She hiccupped. Her eyes filled anew, her lip beginning to quiver. Just as she was about to burst into tears, Haymitch drew her into his arms, pulling her tight against his body, arms curled protectively around her. One hand stroked her hair as he spoke. "Let it out, sweetheart. Let it out."

And for the first time, he utters the callous nickname softly, reverently, like a caress rather than a weapon. That's when he knows, for the first, definitive time, that something has changed. That she didn't have to be alone in this, and maybe, neither did he.

Maybe there was some meaning in that.