Tear Ducts
\
They say opposites attract, and that's definitely true when it comes to them.
\
When she first meets him, they argue. They're eleven years old, at an elementary school debate. She's a quiet little girl from the Seam with gray eyes and brown hair in pigtails who rarely speaks, let alone debates, but her class has elected her to participate because no one else wants to, and she doesn't protest.
She's nervous, of course, wiping her sweaty hands off her blue plaid dress. Her teacher hands her a microphone and tells her to go walk onto the stage and try her best. She and the participant from the other class, a boy her age with fire in his eyes named Haymitch Abernathy, shake hands and take their places on either side of the stage.
With both of their classes watching, they debate. The debate is about whether students should wear uniforms or not, and he's loud and sarcastic and bold, but she answers every single one of his arguments in her quiet, factual, never-rising voice. He eventually gets so frustrated that he throws down the microphone.
She wins the debate.
\
She sees him more often after that. Most of the time, they debate—some formal, some informal. They argue about anything and everything—whether it's something as trivial as whether broccoli tastes better than cauliflower or something more serious like the evils of the Hunger Games. She usually wins, because he'll eventually get fed up and start swearing, which is never effective. She gains the title of The Only One Who Can Out-Argue Haymitch, who apparently has a reputation as someone you can should never disagree with.
Eventually, they stop arguing so much and start to talk—about themselves, about school, about the weather, the Capitol, anything. Everything they used to argue about, they just talk about. They still argue, of course, but they find that they agree on things a lot more than they disagree on, if they really put their heads together. He lives in the shack right across her street, and they begin to walk to school together.
They're opposites—she's quiet Livie Isarbee who rarely speaks and gets along with everyone, and he's bold, sarcastic Haymitch Abernathy who has more enemies than friends and talks too much for his own good. But slowly, she grows to care for him. And one day, on the way to school, Haymitch kisses her out of the blue, and they begin dating.
\
Haymitch is sixteen when he's reaped for the Quarter Quell.
She doesn't cry, and neither does he, because he never cries.
They don't say much in the visitor's room. But she asks him to come back, and he says yes.
It's enough.
\
She watches him with his fellow District Twelve tribute, a pretty town girl named Maysilee Donner, and she doesn't know what to feel.
She should feel jealous, and possessive, and angry, but she's never been one to feel such things. Instead she watches silently, as she always does, knowing that Maysilee has to die for Haymitch to come back. She watches them fall asleep together under a beautiful maple tree the day they create their alliance, watches them argue with equal wit and sarcasm, and wonders if they were meant to be, the tragic lovers of District Twelve.
When Maysilee dies, she still doesn't know what to feel. With Maysilee gone, Haymitch is definitely coming home—but he won't be coming home as her Haymitch. She notices the little changes in him right away—the tenderness in which he holds her hand as Maysilee dies, the look of utter horror in his eyes, and knows it then and there, he loved her.
Strangely enough, she doesn't feel jealous. Instead she cries, which she almost never does.
\
He comes home, but she was right—he doesn't come home as her Haymitch.
When he comes off the train, she rushes forward and wraps her arms around his waist, because she can't control herself and she's missed him so much, but he just stands there with that hollow look in his eyes and doesn't hug her back.
Whenever he looks at her, she knows he's seeing someone else: a merchant girl with blonde hair and blue eyes and a sharp tongue.
When she talks to him, the way she always does, soothing and factual and kind, he doesn't answer or seem to be quite there, as if he's remembering something else.
He's gone.
Maybe for good.
\
A week passes. She nurtures him, skipping school and going over to his new house in the Victor's Village every day. His parents never say anything about her skipping; they just whisper to her about Haymitch's deterioration and how he's refusing to eat. She force-feeds him, she keeps his house in order, and she talks to him—about the weather, about the upcoming debate at school, about anything and everything—but the conversations are one-sided now, and he never speaks.
"I don't understand," she tells him a particularly tough day, fighting back tears. "What happened to you?"
He swallows, and speaks softly, the first thing he's said to her in days. "You're right. You don't understand. You can't help me. No one can." And he just looks at her with so much pain that she wants to take him in her arms and comfort him, but she remembers that she can't do that anymore—he's not hers.
Instead she yells, which she never, ever does.
"I can't help you? I can't help you? Fine, then, I won't help you!"
She storms out of the house, slamming the door along the way.
\
She doesn't go to his house the next day. Instead she goes to school and acts normal—quiet little Livie Isarbee, who used to be Haymitch's girl.
But he appears at her house in the Seam that night, and she's so surprised that she forgets to be angry and lets him in.
"I'm sorry," he says to her. "About yesterday."
She lets him sit on her sofa and makes him cheap mint tea, and they sip the tea quietly together.
"I'm sorry too," she says. "I shouldn't have burst out like that."
"It's not your fault. It's just—it's just—"
And he begins to cry, which is even more surprising than her yelling, because he's Haymitch, all spark and fire, who's rumored not to even have tear ducts. But she's watching him with her very eyes, and she takes his head into his lap and strokes his hair, and curses the Capitol for doing this to him.
"That's it," she finally says, after he's thoroughly soaked her only skirt. "You need to stop doing this, Haymitch. We need to do something happy."
"Happy?" he asks, as if he's forgotten the meaning of the word.
"Yes." She helps him up to his feet and smiles. "Remember when I taught you how to waltz?"
And he nods, and they're both remembering the junior high dance when she taught him how to waltz, the first time she ever felt anything for him, and she sees something like a ghost of a smile on his face.
She begins to hum an old melody, and quietly sing. It's an easy, simple tune that everyone knows, and he takes her hands, and they begin to dance.
They dance until she sees him smile, really smile, and even though he's still crying, he's smiling, and it's enough for one night.
"You should go back to your home, now," she tells him.
He nods. "Thanks for tonight, Livie," he says with a snarky smile, a hint of his old personality, and briefly kisses her on the cheek before rushing off.
It's the first kiss he's given her since he's come back, and she feels thoroughly happy as she goes to sleep that night.
\
(The next morning, he'll come visit the burnt remains of her shack and drop the loaf of bread he's holding. He'll remember how they'd danced in that house, on that grave, just the night before, and buy a bottle of white liquor on the way to home. He'll take a sip and push it away, but it won't be long until he'll touch that bottle again and begin to drink. A lot.
He'll forget the loaf of bread, and it'll stay there, right on the ashes, where they'd danced on her grave.)
Reviews are, of course, appreciated. This was written for Caesar Palace's October prompt: dancing on their graves. Hope you all caught the reason Haymitch was bringing a loaf of bread.