i.

It's Haymitch who finds her. She lies naked on the floor of her cell, pale skin smeared with purples and greys and muddy reds, its smoothness marred by swelling and deep, long cuts. His anger multiplies tenfold, but there are no Peacekeepers on whom to take it out. The fighting is over, for the most part. The rebels have won.

He calls for medics and goes to kneel by her side, feeling her neck for a pulse, sighing with relief when he finds it, weak and rapid but there.

He stays until they come for her, wrap her gently in clean sheets, take her away on a stretcher after determining she will survive the trip. He hates them for that, for their grim practicality, but he is grateful that she has passed their quick examination.

They almost lose her that first night, a long and sleepless affair for him, what with the resuscitation efforts and the worry over Katniss, the news of her sister's death, the reality of who sent the parachute bombs. He considers stealing sedatives from any one of the doctors or nurses walking to and fro with vials of them. There are so many wounded here, no one would miss just one vial, one syringe, would they?

But the greatest comfort he has is that they have survived. Katniss is alive despite all the chaos she has been through, Peeta is coming back to them after the cruel hijacking of his months in the custody of demons, and Effie had stayed true to her word, she had withstood the mighty tempest reserved for traitors. They had survived where his family and his girl hadn't twenty-five years ago, and he drinks to that, to the gut-wrenching flicker of happiness that burns in his veins when it comes to him.

Coin twists her lips into a nasty grimace when word gets to her. Ostensibly, she has stopped by intensive care to check on Katniss' condition. When she goes to Haymitch, he knows the truth. This woman is not who she seems. He has served under her out of convenience and necessity. He even allowed himself to believe that she might change as time went on and the rebels claimed victory.

In the little waiting room by the ICU, her posture alone confirms his first impressions. She is not to be trusted. She allowed innocent children to die. She is Snow, in her own way.

"Trinket must die, Abernathy," she tells him, no frills and laces, not even the customary, militaristic greetings he has become used to. "As a prominent figure in the atrocities of the old regime, she must be executed for her crimes."

"They're my crimes, too," he growls, curling his hands into fists, wishing for a bottle. "They're Heavensbee's crimes. They're the crimes of your allies, and she is one of them."

"Heavensbee will be pardoned due to his active involvement in the rebellion, and you were never to be tried at all. But Trinket has done nothing to merit special consideration, and I will not allow a single ounce of sympathy for those people to pass through our minds."

"Not without a trial," he says, and he does not look away until Coin has turned and left.

When he tells Heavensbee, the former Gamemaker merely shakes his head. "I had hoped she would have waited to tell you after the dust had settled, perhaps after Katniss comes to and you have less on your mind."

"Coin isn't the type of person who gives a shit for how other people feel, for what they're dealing with," Haymitch says. He doesn't need to give specifics. For all that Heavenbsee had a hand in killing children for sport and entertainment, he had committed those murders because he'd had no choice. Coin has no such excuse. She'd had options, and she had gone the route of a coward.

"I will not rest until we secure Effie's pardon," says Heavensbee.

Haymitch's agreement is implicit.

ii.

"Everything has changed," Effie breathes, tears streaming down her cheeks as she stares at him.

"Only some things," Seneca tells her. His smile is not sad, but it is subdued. Is that because he is at peace, or because he is resigned to what has transpired since he was taken from them, from her?

The endless blue of his eyes is deep and bright and achingly familiar, and it cuts new wounds into her bones. "Important things."

"Yes."

She swallows, sniffs, brushes tears roughly from her face as guilt fills her nearly to bursting. "So blame me for it. Yell at me. Tell me how much you hate me!"

He shakes his head, even that movement tranquil, like all of him in his pristine suit of darkest blue. "I could never blame you for living."

"I don't want to live anymore," she whispers, but that isn't true. She glances over her shoulder as if she can see it there, Panem with its fresh rubble strewn with the bodies of all who gave their lives in the rebellion, no matter their allegiance. It's a broken world, and she is a broken soul, but they can rebuild, she knows, and she can heal, she thinks.

He takes her hands, but she pulls them free and embraces him, hiding her face in his chest. He smells like he used to, like lavender and oak, and he is as gentle as he used to be.

"I can't," she tells him, shutting her eyes. "I can't."

The sunlight of this perfect meadow blinds her even as she turns her face away. It burns away the comfort his arms afford her, his scent, the fresh grass and the cool breeze. She is not standing, not leaning against him; she is lying down in a small bed, white sheets draped over her, and there is a needle in her arm and a mask over her mouth and nose.

There is no blue in this room save what she sees when she closes her eyes, that crystal clear memory of forgiveness and trust.

She must keep living. She must do her part to ensure that history does not repeat itself so long as she is able to keep breathing.

She almost forgets how to do even that when she sees Katniss again.

Plutarch had said to her, "She looks so desperately lost most days," and he had told her how the rebellion had been ended. He had asked her to resume her old role for Katniss' sake, and for her own sake, because as long as she has a task, Coin cannot touch her.

Katniss looks almost normal in her robe, but Effie sees the truth in her grey eyes, how they look like clouds in an overcast sky that threatens rain but never follows through. For her sake, Effie smiles, allows herself to pretend nothing has changed between the Quell and this moment, that she has not endured unnamable horrors in the halls of hell, that Katniss has not had so much taken from her since the day she volunteered for her precious little sister, a hero in her own right.

This big, big, big day becomes an awful, frightening, terrible nightmare, because Katniss' arrow does not miss its mark. In time, Effie will understand the change in target, but for now, this is not on her schedule, and her clipboard is her only defense against the flood of people, the ever-shifting current of confusion, places to go, people to see. The chaos robs her of clarity, but Heavensbee finds her soon enough. He leads her away, confesses that this was not in anyone's plans, and tells her that whenever Katniss has acted outside of the rules, it has worked for the best.

"I trust her," Effie says to him, breathing deeply, her heartbeat frantic as the execution plays in her mind over and over. She trusts her to hell and back, and she nearly says as much during the trial.

Somewhere along the line, after Haymitch and Katniss have gone back to District Twelve, Effie is officially pardoned. Heavensbee off-handedly suggests televising the moment Paylor makes the pronouncement, and Effie senses that he actually would like that. She understands, of course. This fledgling nation needs to know what is happening in their seat of government, deserves to know who is for them and who against them. Perhaps they even need to see the shame of the people who took such pleasure in violating their privacy and displaying gruesome fights as if they were mere programs, scripted dramas.

He doesn't do that, though. She doesn't have to tell him no for him to see that she cannot bear it.

iii.

"You three are all I really have anymore."

"Same," Haymitch says. He takes her hand from the handle of her bag, his hold loose but secure.

"I couldn't stand to see you go. When Peeta left, I bought my ticket right away, and I would have gone without packing if I could be sure there were shops here now for me to get new clothes when I arrived."

It smells like rain. The scent drifts in through the open windows, on a breeze that promises a rainstorm as it plays with her hair. No more wigs, no more make-up, no more pretending. She is really living now, or if she isn't, she is at least beginning to breathe.

She meets his gaze, lacing her fingers through his. "Do you ever just want to stop?" She does not elaborate. She does not need to.

"Every day," he tells her. He places his free hand on her cheek, and she shuts her eyes, and the sting of tears begins to fade.

"You saved my life," she confesses, but he will never know how true that is. He saved her from certain death from her wounds and from execution at the hands of the rebels, and those are quantifiable facts. They can count the hours it took her to recover, the long weeks of abuse, the days of arguing and counter arguing with Coin and her agents, and later with Paylor. But there is no way to demonstrate the pull of that perfect meadow and the blue she had once believed she would lose herself in forever, the sweet warmth of forgiveness and perfect, absolute trust.

In Haymitch's arms, she finds those things, too, but they are different, heavier with other memories, with deeper guilt. What's more, he understands the things she cannot say about her captivity, the things she wants to tell him but she cannot begin to express, not yet, not when she sees them so frequently in her dreams and feels them so intensely in her flesh.

He sees things, too, and he wakes fighting them, his instincts still sharp after all these years since he left the arena. Sometimes he wakes when she is locked away and in the hands of someone terrible. He cannot kill those men, but he holds her as she shakes, and slowly, the will to live comes back, flooding through her veins like the medicine from the hospital, dulling the pain until she is strong enough to endure without it.

Only she will never have to be without this, because he is here, and this is home for them both.

Outside, there is a Meadow. She never saw it in its former glory, but she can see what it will become. She buys seeds when the next train comes in and plants them there in memory of the people buried in that earth. They will bloom and fill the air with color and life, celebrating survival, singing songs of the happy times the people beneath them had, the brief moments of perfection that they had stumbled upon and held tight to as the storm of the rebellion built and as it crashed all around them. The flowers will speak of the meadow beyond sunset and stars, where the weather is perfect and everyone, everyone who goes there is filled with endless peace.

One day, she will go there. One day, everyone she holds dear in her wounded heart will be there with her, hands joined in the perfect peace they touch now and again when she hears them laugh, when she sees them smile, when they hold each other tight and swear, wordless, that they will never let go.

"This is victory," Effie says as she presses the earth around a new seed. Haymitch pushes a lock of hair from her face, holds it back lest the wind play with it again. "This is living."