Chapter Text
Haymitch is rudely awakened by his brother's knife-like elbow connecting sharply with his stomach.
Most fourteen-year-old boys wouldn’t be too happy having to share a bed with their kid sibling, but elbow attacks aside, Haymitch didn’t mind too much. It was a whole lot warmer in the winter months when their lack of quality blankets and insulation really started to make itself felt.
Their little home certainly wasn’t the easiest to live in. It consisted of just three total rooms, two of which were barely big enough to shove a bed into, and the main space didn’t really make up for it either, hosting just a small kitchen area, a table and chairs.
To make matters even worse, the wooden planks the walls were made from were terrible quality and had gaps between them that let in horrifying amounts of cold wind and coal dust.
None of that mattered though, because it wasn’t really the house itself that Haymitch cared about, but the people inside of it, they were the ones that made it into a home.
It was in the small details, the fresh flowers Ma would pick from the Meadow, Pa’s heavy work boots strewn about as a tripping hazard, and in the trail of clumsy destruction that seemed to follow Rory like a shadow.
Glancing over, Haymitch found the pale form of his brother steadily breathing, but still dead to the world. He sighed and craned his neck to look out the window. The sigh turning into a groan when he sees daylight battling over the cloudy horizon, and knows it was definitely too late to go back to sleep.
Haymitch was absolutely not a morning person. It was with all the grace of a dying deer that he hauled himself upright and scrubbed at his face until he felt remotely ready to participate in the real world. Though to be fair, Haymitch found the starving, coal-dusted world of District Twelve difficult to participate in at the best of times.
He staggers into his clothes and blearily makes his way into the kitchen to gnaw on some hunks of tesserae bread and call it breakfast, mindful to only take enough to stop the worst of his stomach grumbling so the rest of his family could also have some.
He can never quite believe that this bleak meal prospect was actually considered somewhat of a luxury in the impoverished District Twelve. How could the hollow and ever-present feeling of hunger possibly be called a sign of luxury?
Just as he was starting his oh-so-filling breakfast, his Pa stumbled into the room, his tousled dark hair and bright eyes an exact match for Haymitch’s own, like looking into a much taller mirror.
The vague grunt in Haymitch's direction and haphazard hand clap on his shoulder reveals the slightly dishevelled man to be a fellow morning hater. They sit in companionable silence, and oddly it’s one of Haymitch’s favourite parts of the day.
He doesn't really see Pa all that much since he needs to spend so much time working, so he’s taken to silently cherishing what time they do get together.
Even without words Haymitch can feel something like warmth hum between them.
Soon enough an energetic tornado, in the form of Rory skipping and shouting, sweeps into the room. He immediately trips over a loose floorboard and faceplants. Just like every other morning.
Haymitch doesn’t even bother mocking him for it anymore, especially when it barely slows down his excited babble about breakfast.
“Ugh… how on earth do you have the energy to be so loud so early in the morning?” Haymitch asked incredulously, sharing a look with his bemused father. For a small kid, he sure did make an impact that you couldn’t help but smile at.
Rory was one of the smallest boys his age in the District, and considering how malnourished everybody was, that was quite the accomplishment. No matter how much extra food Haymitch and their parents sneakily gave the kid, his ribs were still always visible, his skin was always too pale, and it seemed to make him a scarily easy target for disease.
Not that he necessarily got sick often, but when he did, he fell harder than anybody else. Haymitch was constantly terrified that it would be for the last time, and yet the little fighter always seemed to pull through and bounce out of bed a week later like nothing had happened.
Rory was far and away the most…enthusiastic…of the Abernathy clan, his light grey eyes always burning with relentless energy. He injected some much needed life into their otherwise drab existence, not that Haymitch would ever actually tell him that.
“Why are you so quiet? I’m sooo excited for school today! I’m going to ask Poppy Bower to do the rock project with me!” Rory spurted in a rush, prompting another glance between the older Abernathy men.
“Poppy Bower ey?” Pa replied in a mock grave tone while handing Rory a generous bit of bread, “That's the girl you had lunch with the other day, it must be getting pretty real between you two.”
Haymitch silently applauds Pa for being able to consider the love life of a ten-year-old remotely as serious as this, but Pa always seemed to know just what to say if Rory’s responding grin was anything to go by.
“What’s this about my little boy having a girlfriend?” Ma asked in a light tone as she glided into the room, smiling indulgently at Rory and kissing both him and Haymitch on the head, which he was definitely too old for but graciously allowed since there wasn’t anybody else to see.
He often made these little exceptions for his Ma. She always told him that seeing her boys was the best part of her day. This probably didn’t count for much since the rest of it was spent in a dark and sweaty coal mine, but it made him feel special anyway.
Ma somehow had the most olive skin tone out of them all, and combined with her medium brown hair, it felt to Haymitch like she radiated warmth whenever she smiled at him.
Rory had turned slightly pink at all this interest in him and his girl, “Ew. She’s not my girlfriend or anything gross like that… I just think she’ll be… good with the rocks”, he said unconvincingly through the hunk of bread stuffed into his mouth, staring resolutely at the table and not at the grinning faces of his family.
“Oh, come on squirt, one minute, it’s rocks, and then it’s flowers and marriage and babies…,” Haymitch says to him teasingly, smirking at the glare he gets in response. Ah, the joys of being a big brother. Their parents just shared a fond look, well used to the bickering siblings, and Haymitch knows they secretly love the loud chaos the boys could sometimes bring.
“I’m not ever getting married, not like how you wanna marry Mirabel,” Rory shot back, making it Haymitch’s turn to glare, despite his reddening cheeks, causing their parents to finally remind the pair not to fight at the breakfast table.
This did absolutely nothing to stop Rory from sniggering at him however, so Haymitch was forced to simply pretend he didn’t exist. He might love Rory but that didn’t make him likable.
Mirabel was just a friend. Obviously.
Sure, she was the prettiest girl in school, super funny and happy, and the only person Haymitch always wanted to talk to and spend all of his time with… but that didn’t mean anything.
He wouldn’t let it mean anything because even if there was an iota of a chance he might maybe be willing to consider that he liked her, he knew she would never feel the same, not when she could choose practically any of the guys in their year.
It’s not that Haymitch was super unpopular or anything, though there were definitely people who didn’t appreciate his effortless grades or smart mouth.
He just didn’t have any close friends, there were plenty of people he talked to and sat with at school, but it was all pretty surface-level. He could never really figure out how to take it beyond that.
Haymitch tells himself that nobody seemed worth the effort anyway… except maybe Mirabel.
Mercifully, Rory and his laughter soon declare that he has to leave right this second if he is going to see Poppy before school, hurrying out the door before Haymitch can properly start teasing him again after the scowling interlude.
Pa has to leave soon too, since he needs to help set up the mines for the day, leaving just Haymitch and Ma.
“Doing anything interesting in school today?” she asks, just like every other day.
“Don’t think so, we’re getting our essay grades back in English, but that's more terrifying than interesting,” he replies with a worried frown.
He wasn’t bad at essays, but the book they’d had to read was from the Capitol, so had pretty much no relation to anything he had actual experience with, making it hard to flesh out some of the arguments.
Basically, it seemed to be about a young girl who found out that one of her friends was a rebel sympathizer and handed them over to the peacekeepers. The propaganda was incredibly blatant and almost completely ineffectual on a District Twelve audience where it was pretty obvious everybody was a rebel sympathizer.
Not that there were actually any rebels to sympathize with.
“Honey, you’re such a smart boy, and with how hard you worked on it, I’m sure you’ll have done just fine,” Ma soothes. She lays her hand over his and gives it a comforting squeeze, which was nice even if he didn’t really mean for his half-hearted complaint to encourage a full on pep talk.
“And if not, that’s ok too. One bad grade isn’t the end of the world, Haymitch. What’s important is that you did your best and that you try just as hard next time,” she says, giving his hair a calming ruffle. “You should really stop putting yourself under so much pressure.”
The look on her face was filled with affection, though her silver eyes betrayed concern too, and Haymitch immediately feels guilty for worrying her, intentionally or not. “Yeah, I know Ma. I just wanna make you proud,” he mumbles, not quite able to meet her eye and not quite prepared for this level of emotion so early in the day.
“Haymitch Abernathy,” she reprimands, “I am always proud of you no matter what. One bad grade, especially from that horrible Mrs Winters, could never change that.”
He cracks a smile at that. Mrs Winters had been the English teacher since before Ma was in school, so had taught most of the District at this point, and as such, was hated by most of the District. She was known to criticize students for the smallest possible details, which often had nothing to do with the actual work, but she acted as if they were doing it to offend her personally.
Haymitch had once turned in a worksheet with an unflattering doodle of her in the corner just to see what would happen. He ended up getting shouted at for ten minutes straight and a meeting with the principal for ‘egregious delinquent behaviour’. The way her neck vein bulged to twice its size was hilarious.
It also felt good to hear Ma say she was proud of him. Even if she did say it often, he sometimes had trouble believing it, because he knew he wasn’t anything special.
“Thanks,” he smiles. “Are you doing anything interesting at work today?” he asks pointlessly, just like every other day.
This, of course, earns him a wry smile and raised eyebrow, a perfect mirror of his own expression, “Oh yes of course, bashing a pickaxe into a rock wall all day is always such a delight. Honestly, I wish they would stop making us take all those pesky breaks and days off.”
“You should ask to sleep down there too. You know, so you can be closer to the coal.”
“Brilliant idea, sweetheart. Though really, I need to try and stop sleeping; it really cuts into my mining hours,” she proclaims with a mournful shake of her head. Haymitch loved the fact they shared the same type of sarcastic humour, they could go back and forth trading barbs at anything and everything for hours at a time.
Back when he was younger, when he had really tried in earnest to make friends other than his brother, he quickly found out that most of the other kids didn’t understand his jokes, much to his dismay.
“Oh and look at the clock, finally time to leave, how incredibly exciting,” Ma says in a painfully dry tone while standing up and giving his hair a kiss.
The scent of her special flower soap fills his nose. It never failed to make him happy. It was one of the few luxury items they really had in the house, and certainly not practical when normal soap does fine, but Ma said you just needed something nice every once in a while. Seeing how happy it made her, he couldn’t disagree.
“Love you, have a good day at school,” she calls on her way out, the door swinging shut before he can return the sentiment.
He should probably be leaving now too, but allows himself an extra minute to soak in the calming effect that talking to Ma always seemed to have. Nothing else seemed to matter when she said she was proud of him.
Finally, he manages to drag himself out of the house and back to reality, just in time to run into Mirabel.
The morning light was shining down at just the right angle, making her chocolate hair seem to glow as it framed her face in pretty curls, just like a storybook princess. Her deep brown eyes widened when she saw him, tugging her mouth into a shy smile. She was easily the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.
“Uh… hi Haymitch,” she starts nervously, rocking slightly on the balls of her feet, as if surprised to find him at his own house. “Since you’re here, did you maybe want to walk to school together? With me?” she squeaks.
Haymitch can’t help but stare blankly at her for a second, dumbfounded that Mirabel would be here in the first place and even more mystified that she seemed to think he might actually say no.
Sure, they weren’t good friends or anything, more like acquaintances through other people, so he guessed that technically it was a fair concern. Anybody would be completely crazy to turn her down though.
Her eyes shift to the dirt, making him realise he has probably been staring silently for a second too long.
“I’d totally love to walk with you!” Haymitch enthusiastically rushes… maybe too enthusiastically, “I mean, yeah, that’d be cool,” he tries again, pairing it with a suave smirk.
Mirabel’s bright answering smile makes him feel like less of a complete loser, though his heart seems to skitter in his chest like an overly excited puppy.
“Sweet! I was really hoping you would,” she replies, glancing over and then ducking her head slightly as they set off towards the school, a hint of blush just visible through the curtain of her hair.
“So, um, ready to get our essays back then?”
Haymitch groans theatrically, “I don’t think I can ever be ready for that disaster.”
“Yeah,” she grimaces sympathetically, “At least we can blame Mrs Winter’s ridiculous marking for some of it.”
“Absolutely, you know my last essay she took off five entire points because apparently she ‘didn’t like the pen I wrote it with’.”
Hearing Mirabel’s peeling giggles at something he said makes something in his chest glow with bright light, and he can’t help but burst out into uncharacteristic laughter too, trading glances and smiles with her.
All too soon however, the pair arrive at school, garnering a few stares as they approach together, though Haymich couldn’t care less, and Mirabel just sends everybody a friendly wave.
The school building is an intimidating structure, three stories high and made entirely out of cold grey brick and spotted with grimy windows, just the sort of place you don’t want to spend eight hours a day, five days a week.
Haymitch trudges up the stairs and begrudgingly waves goodbye to Mirabel, heading to his first and favourite class of the day, history. A lot of people would be surprised by how much he likes history since a startlingly large portion of it was just more Capitol propaganda, but there was always a grain of truth that was fun to try to ferret out.
The corridors, like the exterior of the building, are a drab grey paired with harsh white lights that seem to suck the colour and life out of anybody who dared walk the halls. There were a few colourful posters put up here and there, but they looked so washed out that seeing them was more depressing than the plain walls.
Even worse though were the people filling the corridors. They whispered to each other and shot ‘surreptitious’ looks in his direction, word inevitably travelling fast about him and Mirabel in such a small school.
Haymitch just rolls his eyes at all of them and pushes his way through the crowd. He’d probably find the energy to be more annoyed if a stupid grin didn’t keep trying to fight its way onto his face whenever he thought about her.
In fact, Mirabel occupied pretty much all of his thoughts throughout the day, which was fine when he was actually having lunch with her but less so when he really needed to focus in his chemistry class.
He could always ask to borrow Mirabel’s notes, she was good at chemistry, maybe ask to study with her as well, then suggest they go for a walk in the Meadow…
Ma and Pa would be so excited to hear about this tonight, even if he’ll definitely get some ribbing for it. If only he could figure out a way not to tell Rory…
Suddenly, his pleasant dreams shatter as the classroom windows explode.