Nine months.

That’s how long it’s been since you last saw Haymitch Abernathy—your best friend, your partner in crime, the boy who used to steal apples from the Peacekeepers’ garden just to make you laugh.

Now he’s the Victor of the 50th Hunger Games, and the Seam has never felt emptier.

His family vanished overnight after his win. No bodies. No explanations. Just three missing chairs at the kitchen table and a silence so thick it choked the whole district. You know the Capitol’s message: Win, but don’t cheat. Survive, but don’t thrive.

Haymitch had done both.

You try not to think about him too much. It’s easier that way.

Then, its March 7th.

The mines took your father’s leg last winter. Now, at seventeen, you’re the only one left who can put food on the table.

You walk the familiar dirt paths of the Seam, the morning air biting at your cheeks. Downtown looms ahead—merchant shops, Peacekeeper patrols, maybe just one job that doesn’t ask too many questions.

Then—a hand yanks you backward.

You stumble into a chest that smells like cheap Capitol soap and something sharper—whiskey, maybe.

Before you can scream, a voice rasps in your ear:

"I thought I’d never see you again."

Haymitch.

You whirl around.

He’s paler, his golden hair dulled to ash-blond under the weak sunlight. There’s a new scar cutting through his eyebrow, and his eyes—God, his eyes—look like a graveyard.

But it’s him.