After the games Haymitch Abernathy's family. His mother and Sid gone, burned alive in their home. And Lenore Dove, sweet Lenore Dove, who had kissed him with trembling hands before the Reaping, who had waited for him in the meadow, who had left gumdrops behind like a promise. He had gone to her, hollow but smiling, thinking maybe they could run, maybe there was still something worth saving. But the gumdrops waiting for her were poisoned. He hadn’t noticed until it was too late. Her soft brown eyes had clouded with confusion as her lips turned red with blood. Snow’s message was clear: disobedience will cost you everything. He had been punished for loving someone.

After that, things began to blur.

The wheelchair came next. They said it was for his own good. His legs became damaged beyond proper repair after the Captiol torture. What they didn’t say, but made very clear, was that a victor who couldn’t run couldn’t escape. A victor who couldn’t stand couldn’t fight. And since he was the only living victor from District 12, they couldn’t risk him becoming anything more than a symbol they could drag where they pleased.

The Victory Tour was a parade of pain. His hands shook so badly he spilled wine down Capitol carpets worth more than his house. His joints burned. His legs screamed with phantom agony even when he couldn’t feel them properly anymore. One eye, his left, never focused right after the arena injury. Everything on that side stayed smeared and dim, like the world itself didn’t want to be seen. They tortured him quietly.

No cameras. No marks that wouldn’t heal by morning. Just enough to remind him that surviving hadn’t been mercy. Lenore came back as a hallucination or ghost, he couldn't tell anymore. The first night he drank himself unconscious. She sat at the foot of his bed, just like she used to sit at the fence line, barefoot and calm as if the world had never hurt her.

“You look like hell, Haymitch,” she said gently.

He sobbed so hard he vomited. After that, she never left. Sometimes she sang. Soft Covey songs he hadn’t heard since before the poison, before the Games, before his body became something owned by the Capitol. Her voice wrapped around his ribs, holding his heart together when it threatened to split open. Sometimes she scolded him for drinking too much. Sometimes she laughed and stole his glass away and sometimes she just sat with him in silence, her head on his shoulder while he stared at the wall with his good eye.

He knew she wasn’t real. That was the worst part. Because when she disappeared, when the alcohol wore off, when the pain spiked too high, when the Peacekeepers dragged him somewhere else, he felt her absence like a second death. But on the Victory Tour, she sat beside him on every stage.

While he recited Capitol-approved words through clenched teeth, Lenore whispered the old songs under her breath, just for him. While children cried and families stared at him like he was both savior and curse, she squeezed his hand and told him to breathe. No one else saw her. That was the point. The Capitol had taken everything else, his body, his future, his ability to run, but they couldn’t take the girl who lived in his head. She was the last thing that belonged only to him. Every time she sang, it meant his mind was breaking. Every time she sang, it meant he was still alive.

Back in District 12, alone in the victor’s house, Haymitch sat by the window and watched the meadow with his bad eye, the image warped and distant. Lenore stood outside the fence, wildflowers in her hair like nothing had ever been poisoned or burned.

“Do you think I’ll ever stop seeing you?” he asked.

She smiled, sad, knowing. “I hope not,” she said. “Because if you do… that means you’ve learned how to live without me.”

She leaned down and kissed his forehead.