Chapter Text
There are some things that will follow Haymitch Abernathy for the rest of his life.
Of course, there are and always will be nightmares. There are the familiar ones he's been having for decades, but there are also some fresh horrors from the days of the Mockingjay Rebellion. Peeta's bloody and bruised face choking out a desperate warning on screen. Those hours when he thought Katniss and Peeta had both died infiltrating the streets of the Capitol. Prim going up in flames. The few years' distance from those moments helps, but not enough, not yet, maybe not ever.
Which is why the desire for alcohol follows him too, the only way to try to make those thoughts go away. It never works. So as strong as that pull towards the bottle is, sometimes Haymitch tries to stop before he gets there. He hasn't told anyone yet, but this time he hasn't touched liquor in almost two weeks. Holding off is getting just a little easier with practice.
That just gives him time to take special note of yet another companion. Guilt is an old friend, and by now, Haymitch would barely know how to live if it wasn't tracking his every footstep. It shows up in small doses, whenever he spends time at someone else's house or has a drink. It tries to rear its head whenever he thinks of that fateful day when he voted yes to the new Hunger Games. In that moment he bet everything he believed in on his trust in Katniss. But I was right, he'll tell that feeling of remorse, she knew what she was doing. And so the guilt will subside for a moment.
But it comes back in force every time Peeta has an episode. Haymitch is not the only one who will be followed by horrors forever.
Peeta sat him down once, afterwards, and tried to put those guilty thoughts to rest. "They would have captured me either way," he said. "I would have gone running after Katniss and I'd have been nowhere near the edge of the arena when it blew. They'd have taken me right along with Johanna. Better that you got out safely at least." The logic makes sense. Haymitch has played it in his head a million times and he doesn't see how he could have done better. But he still wonders, if he'd planned things differently, if he hadn't volunteered, if maybe Peeta would be healthy and whole today.
Those are things he'll never know. Questions that maybe, one day, he'll be ready to accept there's no answer to and move on. Until then, they follow him like everything else.
But there are some better things that insist on staying with him too.
The bombing of District 12 is by no means a happy moment in his memory. But the survivors of District 12 are dearer to him than he could have guessed. Most of the population was killed on the day the Games ended, but there were still almost two thousand survivors, and those first days in District 13, they kept coming up to him and thanking him for their lives. It was the story about his family that saved them, they explained when he asked. For many of them it was the first time they learned how directly the Capitol would retaliate for something that happened in the Hunger Games. So the moment Katniss shot her arrow, some realized what was coming for them and fled. More than half of the survivors swear that Haymitch is the only reason they are still alive.
So now, sometimes, when he wonders if he's ever done any good for the world, instead of drinking he'll go take a walk by the school in town and see the children running into their parents arms, those parents who survived the bombing, and feel like he maybe had a part in those little moments of joy.
And there are two children who run up to him sometimes, who describe him as either "Haymitch" or "my grandfather" depending on the day, and he gets to feel that same foreign emotion before he shoos them back to their classes.
Because the deepest, truest thing he carries is love. He feels it in the occasional visits from Chaff which become regular visits until Chaff finally moves to Twelve and gets the house right next door. He hears it in the greetings and chatter from everyone at Katniss and Peeta's house when they host guests at dinner. He sees it in the corner of Effie's smile when she attends one and trades insults with him all evening. Love is everywhere around him, sent in all those indirect ways they use to tell each other without really saying it, and he decides he may as well hold on to it as long as it's there.
It is hard to say whether he's happy. But Haymitch has lived long enough by now to know that worrying over that question is more trouble than it's worth. He has more peace than guilt and more purpose than pain. That's close enough for him. It makes him feel like maybe, after all this time, there's something he can actually say he's won.