I sit in my mother's old rocker in front of the fireplace, rocking myself slowly back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I clutch the armrests too tightly, my knuckles whitening, my raw skin breaking and bleeding with the force of it. The force of my resistance. Resistance to the pain that is constantly rising to the surface, threatening to consume me.

But I must not break. I must keep fighting. The old instinct to survive is mostly what keeps me going. Not living, but alive. That and Greasy Sae's daily force feeding.

I don't talk to her, or to her granddaughter. She's too lost in her own world anyway.

I don't talk to anyone. I don't pick up the phone, which rings a few times every day. I can't imagine who'd be calling. Cinna's the only one who ever called me back before the Quarter Quell, before the war, but he's gone now...

The only other phones in District 12 are in the other houses in the Victor's Village, and I don't know where Peeta is. Not here. I haven't seen him since before the conclusion of the war, I think. I'm not quite sure. The details of my memories, both old and recent, are all hazy and jumbled. I wonder what Peeta's memories looked like when the tracker jacker venom distorted them to unspeakable terrors. Not like this. Probably worse.

I think they reinstalled Haymitch's telephone a while ago, but I can't imagine why he'd be calling me, or speaking to me, or speaking at all. He's drunk, no doubt. Probably unconscious. Maybe dead.

I remember the last exchange we had, immediately after arriving back in District 12 after the fallout from my assassination of President Coin. Haymitch had walked me home, made sure I was comfortable in my little chair by the fire, and told me he'd see me tomorrow.

"Doubt it," I remember saying. And I know he knew I was right. He knew it would be too hard to face me after that day. After everything.

It would be hard for me too, I think as I rock back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. After everything I have lived through, everything Haymitch has lived through, after watching everything unfold, being a part of it and knowing it would hurt me to keep everything from me, seeing me struggle without being able to do anything about it, and struggling himself.

I remember not seeing or hearing from Haymitch for weeks after escaping from the Quarter Quell arena. District 13 was completely dry, and Haymitch had to be cleansed. He was dead to the world for weeks. Gone in withdrawals. Gone in nightmares and shaking and screams and loneliness. He was completely alone. All that time. I never came to his rescue. No one else did either. I'm the only one he had, really, I think. And I was too busy with myself and my own miseries.

I heave a sigh and stare into the embers glowing softly the fireplace. It's the only light in the darkened room. There's no light outside the windows, either. Night fell sometime while I was lost in my own desolate thoughts. I rock the chair a little faster, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It creaks feebly in the silent room, the only other sound the crackling fire burning low in its grate. I can hear my own breathing. How am I still breathing? How am I still alive?

Suddenly the telephone rings, high and shrill and in still house. I nearly leap out of my chair, then lay a hand over my hammering heart to calm it. Who the hell could be calling? At this hour?

I pause before sinking back into my seat. I don't really feel like getting up. I don't feel like answering, speaking, acting like I'm okay. I don't feel like anything.

But something pulls me from my place by the fireplace. I think I know somewhere who is calling and why and what I must do. I must know somehow that this is not a call to be ignored.

I heave myself up from the rocker and stumble to the phone in the kitchen. I have to cross the hall, which is cast in complete darkness, and my breath catches in my throat. My lungs are frozen in fear. How I've grown to hate the dark. Just like Haymitch. Nightmares haunt waking hours too.

But I lurch on, reaching the phone just as I'm sure it's about to fall silent. I snatch it from its receiver and bring it unsteadily up to my ear.

My hands are trembling, I think. I can't be entirely sure since the whole world seems to be quaking with midnight fear. Invisible horror. I don't know. But there's a ragged breathing on the other end of the line. Then a rough voice croaking, "Katniss?"

"Haymitch." My voice sounds alien. It's dry and cracked and raw, like my foreign skin. I haven't used my voice in weeks. I haven't had any reason to speak.

"Are you—" Haymitch stops for a moment and all I can think of is how strange it is to receive a phone call in the middle of the night from Haymitch Abernathy. "Are you awake?"

I glance out the window at the blackness beyond, then at the clock on the wall. It's somewhere between midnight and dawn, but I feel wide awake. I can't even remember the last time I slept.

"Obviously," I say without humor, without taunting, without any emotion at all. I don't know.

Haymitch clears his throat. "Right. Well. That's not why I called."

"Obviously," I say again. I've really lost my biting wit these past few months, haven't I?

"Right," says Haymitch again, and I consider hanging up the phone. This is stupid. This is so stupid. The silence on the line goes on a bit too long, and I'm about to put the telephone down when Haymitch speaks again. "You're okay, aren't you, Katniss?"

I don't really know what to say to him. I never really felt the need to censor my feelings to Haymitch, or the truth about most things. I've always been pretty straightforward and blunt with him, like he's always been to me. Well. Almost always. But I haven't told the truth about how I am in a long, long time.

"Not really," I tell him honestly.

Haymitch coughs, and I can almost smell the liquor on his breath. But he's not totally trashed. I know that much. He seems to be having a rather sober conversation with me, really, but who knows? It's Haymitch.

"Me neither," he says, kind of laughing, which seems odd, but it's also a sort of Haymitch laugh, one that's very dry and self-depreciating. A bitter laugh, if you will. Like Haymitch. "I feel like shit, actually."

"Me too."

He laughs again, and I find myself missing Haymitch more than anything at that moment. I miss someone to hate the world with.

That used to be Gale, but then he started hating it a little too destructively. He didn't hate it the same way I do. The same way Haymitch does. We hate it because it gave us hell. It was hell. It is hell. Gale got dealt a shitty card too, sure, but not like us. He doesn't have the motives to hate the world that we have, and still he hates it enough to want to kill everyone in it without thinking about the consequences, about the hipocrisy, about the unending agony we would burn in remorse. Me anyway. Haymitch too, I think. Gale stopped understanding me a long time ago, and I gave up on him then.

But Haymitch. Haymitch is different. He gets me like no one else does. That's why I've always sought his comfort in my darkest moments. He's just like me. He understands. He hates the world the way I do. And he hates himself like I hate myself. And he hates me like I hate him. And we just have a grand old time hating everything together. And I miss that. I miss him.

"Haymitch—" I begin, but he's already talking by the time I take a breath to start.

"Listen, I'm having a rough night. I take it you are too." He laughs again, a little nervous. "Sorry. I don't know. Just—could you—? I've got an extra bottle of—"

And then I'm laughing, just like that. I didn't know I still had the capacity to. And it hurts my throat. And my lungs. And my face, grown used to a perpetual vacancy. It hurts to laugh. And yet it feels good.

"Scared of the dark, Haymitch?"

He's silent for a few moments, and I fear I might have upset him. He's not usually vulnerable like this. But it's not really his style to get offended by little comments. The kind of comments that are certainly his style to make without thinking twice about hurting someone's feelings.

"Something like that."

"I'll be there," I say, and it's like I can sense in the silence buzzing on the other end of the line that he's glad, relieved, a little less scared of what the night holds. That finally he won't have to face it alone.

"Thanks, sweetheart. And don't forget to wear a pretty little smile." And there's the Haymitch I know. The snide one, not afraid to stick one where it hurts.

"Fuck you," I say into the phone, smiling a little too hard, transforming it into a grimace but meaning it some distant, impossible way anyway. I don't know. I don't care.

It just feels so good to finally say something. To feel something other than lost. Afraid. Deeply, irretrieviably sad. It feels good to not look back for just one second, but to look forward. Even if it's looking forward to a moment only a few minutes in the future. It's not the past. It's not the sick, twisted, scarring past that plagues my nightmares, driving me to tortured wakefulness filled with wretched screams that no one can hear.

Given, that moment in the near future I'm looking forward to probably holds that bottomless sadness and regret tenfold. I can never be around Haymitch without remembering the past.

But maybe it's worth it.

It's something, at least.

I hang up the phone and get myself out the door before I have time to fall back into a state of catatonic misery. Before I have time to fall back into the rocking chair by the fire. Before I have time to get lost in the constant replaying of all the terrible things I've seen as I go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

But I'm out the door. I'm safe.

For now.

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