Disclaimer: I don't own The Hunger Games, but if I did I wouldn't have to be a waitress. Dang.

AN: This is something that's been knocking around in my head after rereading the end of tHG and directly starting Catching Fire. What happened during those in-between times? Katniss definitely went to Haymitch's house... So yeah, set somewhere after THG and before CF, with some entire-series-spoilers.. I think. Enjoy!

Screams.

Even with our doors locked and bolted we could hear the screams. They affected Prim, so much that she could barely sleep. She kept asking me about him, if he was alright, why he was so uncontrollable. It was the alcohol, the lack of it in this place. He was going through withdrawal, and without it, was – as I could tell from the nature of his screams and how they mirrored mine – quite obviously haunted by nightmares of all the horrible things his Games and the repercussions of being a Victor had done to him.

Like getting him addicted to the alcohol to begin with, for one.

After two excruciating days of this, of random periods of screams infiltrating our quiet Everdeen routine, I end up at his place. I tell myself it's because of Prim, how I want my drunken, unruly mentor to stop terrorizing her, but truth is I'm more than a little worried about the guy. I mean, when I had those nightmares, Peeta was there to hold me at night. Not anymore, no, but that's beside the point. I ruined everything with that boy by existing in survival mode too long. Anyway, I'm thinking about all this, and about how Haymitch doesn't have anybody, so when another bout of yells begins to penetrate our living room walls and Prim visibly cringes, I heave myself up off the hearth and run out the door. As the sun is getting lower on the horizon, I trek across my yard and Peeta's to my mentor's. I don't even worry about breaking and entering as he always keeps his door unlocked. The wails are ear-piercing now, and I can't use them to judge whether he's awake or asleep.

"Haymitch!" I bellow out, following his yells through the dingy, dirty house. I stomp my way to the kitchen, my feet shoving aside piles of scattered junk and broken glass and dirty laundry. He's sitting in a chair, upper half sprawled over the filthy table, the side of his face planted on the thing. The back of his head facing me, presenting a mop of clumped and matted dirty-blonde hair, so I make a wide arc around him until I'm facing him and –

Woah. In less than a second, I take in the scene before me, my mentor's face contorted into something beyond pain. In front of him the knife that he usually grips in his sleep is jabbed into the table, and he's gripping it too low, so low on the hilt that half of his palm is squeezing into the blade, extracting a thin line of blood that has smeared onto the table beneath.

I'm speechless, but I whip into action right away, knowing I have to get his hand off the knife and bandaged, get him awake and out of this… this… but I still can't tell if he's asleep or in a stupor or…

"Haymitch!" I yell into his ear, praying this works because he always gets way too defensive when I pour water on him, and he breaks off in mid-yell, grip loosening on the knife. I seize my moment and clasp two hands on the handle to pull it out of his grasp but his grip tightens just as I'm about to wiggle it out of the table, and I'd only cut him worse if I kept pulling and all these thoughts are whipping around in my head as I hear a low grumble of a moan build in his throat and I reach a hand out to his sweaty face to wipe away the sweaty mess of hair that's made its way into his face, please no not again, I think I whisper before pulling back, bracing myself as he lets out another ear-piercing –

But I run to the sink and fill the nearest pot, not caring that it's crusted with some remnants of food or more probably vomit and run it back to the table, heaving it over Haymitch as I let the pot clatter to the ground and brace all my body weight on the hilt of the knife because if I don't keep it in the table, it'll be through my head…

With a sputtering, Haymitch jerks out of his terror, and it's all I can do to hold fast to that damn knife as he yanks on it with all the might of a Tribute facing certain death and I think I'm winning until he's suddenly slashing it at me and I fall back to the floor, scooting away, shouting, "Haymitch, Haymitch! It's me, Katniss! Stop!" but he won't stop, he just keeps slashing, getting closer to me and I'm trapped, locked against the kitchen's walls and floor, and "HAYMITCH!"

And suddenly, everything is still.

He's whispering something, sadly, so low I can barely make it out, before I think I hear it –

"May, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…" and he's dropped to his knees on the floor, reaching a hand out to me, knife forgotten, and his eyes, they're not here, not really…

"Haymitch," I reach out two hands and shake his shoulders as roughly as I can. "It's me, Katniss." He looks at me, clouds shifting over his eyes. "Katniss Everdeen," I insist.

And they're gone. He's back. He's back dropped to his knees on his kitchen floor, his Tribute in front of him, telling her who she is so he doesn't cut her to shreds, doesn't call her some dead girl's name. I can see the embarrassment, the regret, the sorry flash through his eyes.

"Sweetheart."

I've only been hugged by Haymitch once before this, and that time it was more like a strategic huddle than a hug. But this time when Haymitch collects me to him, bloodied hands and arms around my shoulders pulling me into his, it's real. I reach up to put a hand to his back in response, but he's pulled me back already, realizing his mistake probably, because Haymitch doesn't hug, and I reroute my action to a swipe at my nose for lack of anything better to do. Two hands snap out to grab mine, though, opening up the palm.

"You have blood on your hands."

I hold back my scoff.

"Yeah, yours," I say like it's the most obvious thing in the world. Because this is how Haymitch and I are supposed to interact. This is our status quo. So I grab his wrist and flip his palm up. I look at his face then, as if to say, see?

"You have to stop sleeping with knives," I say. He attempts to let out a chuckle as I shake my sleeve over my arm and begin to wipe at the blood. I have to steel myself to do it, to keep myself from running back home and getting Prim or my mother to come fix him, but I wouldn't want to subject Prim to this, or explain that Haymitch is not, in fact, insane, to my mother. So he clenches his jaw and tries to pull away saying, "You don't have to-"

"Who else is gonna do it?" I spit back, yanking his wounded hand back to me. We both know he'd just leave it, let himself bleed out is my bet.

It starts looking cleaner but is still spurting blood, so I get up and begin opening cabinets and he asks, "Blood make you hungry, Sweetheart?" The sarcasm and spitting intonation is back in the nickname and I almost sigh in relief. He's back, truly.

"You got any clean towels in here?" I ask, then realizing it's Haymitch and he has piles of dirty shirts in his kitchen, I add, "Or clean anything for that matter?"

"What'd you come here for, a full-out housing inspection?"

"To tell you to keep it down, actually," I correct him. And yeah, I'm bantering with him when I say it, but some measure of sincerity is there too. I watch him carefully, trying to gauge his reaction, and he shakes the hair down into his face, scrunching his lips together.

"Yeah, well, the liquor used to do that," is all he says. He fiddles with an empty glass on the table. "Not so lucky anymore."

I'm furious. This is all he has to say for himself? That he used his alcohol as this much of a crutch and now he's just going to let himself die inside like this? "What am I going to do with you, Haymitch?" I ask exasperated.

"Build me my own Victor Village?" he jeers sadly.

"You can't expect me to want that."

"Why not, I'd be out of earshot, out of mind. Plus that little chickadee of yours wouldn't be so afflicted with me gone."

"You don't need solitary confinement, Haymitch," I speak aloud as I'm thinking, thinking about how Victor Village does isolate us, how being cut off from society is so dangerous to one's sanity, how, every night in the arena when I had my nightmares, Peeta was always there to hold me tight and chase the demons away. "You need people. Or at least somebody. You need their company. You know what your problem is, Haymitch? You don't have a Prim or a Peeta. Somebody to care about and somebody to care about you. You need somebody, if nothing else, to keep away the memories at night."

"I don't know what memories you're talking about, sweetheart. All I got is a bad case of the where's-the-liquor."

I look at him sharply, and he knows he can't pawn it off like that to me, not after calling me Maysilee in his earlier episode.

"'May' is not even close to my name," I remind him.

"I'm fine," he says defensively now, getting angry himself. "Why don't you just scram?"

I sit there still. "Prove you're fine and I will."

"Okay, you know what, for the rest of the night and tomorrow, I'll be quiet, okay? I can manage. I'm fine."

"And if you're not...?"

"Hell, I give you permission to break in here with a crew of Effie Trinkets to keep me some damn company."

My lips screw up in a smile as I agree, "Deal."

"Whatever," he mumbles.

I open the window and slip out into the darkness, warning him, "not so much as a moan, Haymitch."

He gives me a glare and I drop out of sight, trying to erase the Haymitch from the kitchen table that remembered Maysilee from my mind.

AN: I have ideas for extending this, do you think it's worthwhile? Please review, good or bad, I'd love to know what you think of my crackship obsession manifesting itself :)