He's never cared. He's not supposed to. Especially not now.

No, no. Not now.

She's on the last moments of her life, stained with the work of the capitol, her neck tainted with her own blood, her blond curls matted and dirty. But she's never looked more beautiful to him. She's lying in his arms, her breaths growing shallower by the minute, her pale blue eyes, pallid as a cloudy sky, brimming with tears as they slowly trickle down her face.

Drip, drop.

Drip, drop.

"Haymitch," she whispers, and her voice hitches at the end, as her dry, parched, but beautiful lips attempt to form his name, aching to form a coherent word.

Drip, drop. More tears. More blood. They mingle together in a watery concoction, diluting each other.

Then the cannon fires.

Silence fills the air as the tears stop coming, but blood continues to spill down soundlessly, creating a sea of crimson red around her.

She's gone. She's actually gone. Forever. Her eyes are staring open at the sky, looking at nothing, just pale, blue glassy orbs. Like marbles, bearing no resemblance of the fiery passionate electric colour that belonged to the girl he knew. Just a still, unmoving, dead body. A graceful and lovely one, but a corpse, nonetheless.

The four words float to his mind.

No more Maysilee Donner.

A few fleeting glances, pure, azure, sapphire meeting cloudy Seam gray. Insecure. Wavering. Doubt.

A quick brush of the lips. Wanting. Lust.

A tender, long, embrace. Worry. Most of all, fear. For each other.

That was all they had. And in a short period, the time they had been given was snatched away.

He was vulnerable, open. For once, he let himself go.

Just a little, a small turtle creeping out from its' shell. It was stupid. His fist pounds the dirt.

His strategy was to outsmart the others. Instead, he let the Capitol outsmart him.

He was a wide target, and they hit him, deadly accurate in their aim. His care for her was their most lethal weapon. The most deadly of everything they had. He has no one to blame but himself. He should have known better, because they got the better of him.

Only then does he dare to admit. He loved her; she had perished. He saw the light leave her eyes, dulling down. He heard the last breath escape from her lips, the shallow rise and fall of her chest. He felt the vibration of the cannon, himself, signaling the end of her life. The warmth leave her hands, which once clutched tightly his own.

She's dead.

Maysilee Donner is dead.

So that's what he gets for caring.

A fucked-up broken heart, and nothing but her lifeless, ice-cold body left in his arms.

A/N: My first attempt at a drabble. I hope you liked it, because this experience was certainly interesting to write. :) I wanted to try attempting a softer side of Haymitch, and I've always been a strong Haysilee fan, so this was me hitting two birds with one stone. I sort of extended it a little...hee, because I wanted to work on the suggestion Rena Pudding gave me.