milliways_bar | (no subject)

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A man stumbles through the front door, more off-balance than anything.

Off-balance, and slightly tipsy.

He's waiting, you see. No one likes to bet on District Twelve early - odds really aren't in their favor, never have been, other than a couple damn miracles. But he's got the names of a couple people who could be swayed, if the tributes show promise.

One hasn't already. Thankfully a clean kill, he can send the girl home to her momma looking decent. But the boy, the boy's still in this thing. If he can survive two more tributes, he might be able to get a damn sponsor.

So until then, he can't get blinding drunk.

...

So right now, Haymitch Abernathy looks really confused.

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Heeeeello.

Haymitch suddenly takes a whole new interest in his companion, because unless he's managed to royally screw up some point in the future, he can't see the Capitol letting the more vicious mutts loose against District Twelve. That'd be a sure way to start an uprising.

"That strike a chord, son?"

Peeta would curse himself for reacting, but in some part, hard and unyielding, at least it meant it still mattered to him. The horror of it all. Not numbing or blocking it out of himself.

There was only truth or spin to it now.

"I'm really not a fan."

Or the mutts. Or jail cells.

Or even Haymitch on a lot of days.

But he wasn't the one, of the two of them who spent every encounter, biting the hand that helped him. Even if it was the one that had chosen for him to die. Just like everyone else. That wasn't a card to be used like a knife until certain times.

He'd argue that to his dying breath. He didn't choose to let anyone die. He there's only six people he chose death for.

But that is a shouting match for another day.

"Tell me someone who is, and I'll show you a Gamesmaster in training."

"Given," Peeta conceded. Which wasn't very giving.

Not terribly, no.

"So, what's your story, boy?" Things don't just happen to people. The longer he's a Victor, the more he wonders who pissed off Snow in the past that his name got pulled out for the Quarter Quell.

The public one was all the rage. But he wasn't sure either were fit to be giving a man, who lived when he wasn't even a consideration in his parent's future yet. No matter how current that situation might be again.

"Why do you want to know?" It was questioningly toward bland, thinking of how would have considered or taken to any exchange with Haymitch before the 74th Hunger Games. When all he saw was a drunken, slightly rotund man, making a fool of the District as best he could.

"'Scuse me for being neighborly." He's already getting a bit of the general condemnation that becomes more popular in Peeta's time. It's as if, having being given the miracle of a living tribute, they thought that now there was no way they'd lose both tributes every year ever again.

So far, he hasn't brought anyone home alive.

It's not really going over well. Even if no one's actually said something about it.

The harder part is trying to remember, how he couldn't see what he can't miss now. Both for the better and worse. Sharp as one of his knives, no matter that he had the world convinced he was a damn fool, or grown to maybe wish in some part it could be true.

But it wasn't, and if Peeta couldn't miss that when the man was drunk now, he certainly couldn't miss it on the near enough to a sober spectrum to count as good as it got. Peeta shifted his mouth. Thinking. Before his shoulders sank some.

"I've been coming here for a few months back home, but almost a year and half here. As I said, time is...weird here."

Edited 2012-04-11 05:32 (UTC)

He'd ask why the hell the boy didn't run home as fast as he could and bring everyone he could think of through. It's the same reason he won't.

There's being despised, and then there's being looked upon as crazy when you're actually attempting to help.

"Great, more weirdness. I'll have'm carve that on my tombstone some day."

He might, too. Peeta's mouth quirked. More of a twinge, and more flighty and inconsistent, than anything that could resemble a smile. Midnights didn't do well for keeping most things as it was and he managed this thus far.

"You should look around." If anything, they at least didn't get as surprised as anyone else here. Maybe because they were waiting for The Capitol to jump out from every chair, but it is passed the time. Afforded breaks their houses and torturous monotony between chain jerking didn't.

And because he wasn't going to stay, at least not this time yet.

It's not running away, when you know the other person will be fine, right?

Oh no, of course not.

If it helps, Haymitch could give Peeta a list of excuses that help make things sound better, if only in your own head.

Nearly twenty-five years gives plenty of time to think of reasons.

He gives Peeta a wry grin that shows he is fully aware he's being dismissed, but he's curious enough about this place that he won't protest it. Besides. With only one tribute left, he's not sure he wants to face up to too much of Twelve tonight.

"Get on home then, boy."

There are sharp, but wry, things he almost says. He would if it were the man who lived next door. At least one about not falling under the bar when he does inevitably find it. Or giving a beligerent two finger salute at his forehead, to the words that might be order as well as calling him on it, and walking off sans words.

"Yeah." But he isn't that man. Not yet. There isn't that sense of being undeniably shackled in one place, one position, that will only grow more alike, that builds strange, strained, understanding in the silences. "Good luck with everything."

Home, then. To do anything but sleep. For even more reasons now.

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