hunted • haymitch abernathy

nineteen

nineteen; AGONY OF THOSE YOU LOVE

Ember remembers being nineteen before she'd truly allowed Haymitch Abernathy to scratch even slightly at the surface beneath layers and layers of fake smiles and dry conversation.

They'd known one another for nearly five years, and she couldn't understand how he wasn't bored of her stale nature by now.

She preferred to keep people at arm's length before she had ever emerged from the arena with the blood of seven staining her hands, and with the knowledge of just how easy (how terrifying) it was to kill, people got pushed further from her orbit.

It was her first year as a mentor, doing for tributes what Woof had done for her and Burton, and being nineteen, Ember knew so many of the seventeen and eighteen-year-olds. Twyla was fifteen, a year younger than Paige, and they'd lost her on day one in the bloodbath.

Ember had held it together long enough to get back to the suite she and Woof shared before she dissolved into tears so violent that she shook in Woof's embrace. Ember had only known Twyla less than a week.

She had known Tex Paylor.

Tex was a boy she'd grown up knowing. He was her neighbour until the move to the victor's village after her victory. Tex was her friend, and they'd gotten into trouble at school together and with Peacekeepers. He was the fourth person to hold her when she stepped off that train, the first person to see her cry over it, he was her first kiss, and she would be his last.

Woof had said that if there were to be a District 8 victory, it would be Tex.

The sound of the spear entering his gut kept Ember up for years.

She hadn't waited to be in the privacy of her own suite like she had when poor Twyla had died.

Ember remembers that near-feral scream that escaped her as she threw herself up from her seat in the mentor viewing room, in perfect harmony with the boom of the cannon when Tex's eyes slid closed, clutching his necklace with blood-soaked fingers. She remembers speaking, threats and pleading, she remembers Mags and Woof and Haymitch surrounding her as she attempted to leave the room, and she doesn't remember much else until she was sitting up on the rooftop with Haymitch sitting beside her, eyeing her warily as though he was expecting her to start screaming again.

"Sorry." She didn't recognise her own voice, raw from her crying and hollow with grief.

"Had to get you out of there before the Peacekeepers heard you were threatening the lives of the Gamemakers." Haymitch grunted, and Ember did not remember that at all, "Word of advice, sweetheart, you can't let yourself get too attached to tributes like that. You're always going to lose one or both. 'S too painful."

Ember stared at him through her blurry vision, curling further in on herself.

"They told me to say no to President Snow." She finally spoke, and Haymitch looked at her, a wrinkle forming between his brows. Whatever he'd been expecting from her, mostly preparing for an argument, it certainly wasn't that, and he hadn't a clue what she meant by that.

"What?"

"President Snow asked me to entertain some people who sponsor the games. Tex told me I could deny him, and so did my Mom." Her breathing hitched, "So I did, and a week later, they called his name."

A bitter smile spread across her face when his features crumbled in realisation and a potent understanding.

"When Woof was prepping me to help him, he told me what you did, and again when Twyla died, but Tex, h-he was my friend." She whispered, "More than that, I think."