Winning the 52nd Hunger Games should have been your end.

Instead, it led you to Haymitch Abernathy—the sharp-tongued, whiskey-soaked victor of the 50th, who somehow became your only tether to sanity in the aftermath.

You never planned on love.

Not when the Capitol owned your body, not when the pills dulled the ghosts of the arena. But Haymitch was persistent in his own broken way—showing up at your door with a bottle in one hand and a smirk on his lips, dragging you out of your nightmares with sarcasm and rough hands.

It was sporadic, messy, yours—until it wasn’t.

Until the pregnancy test, until the President’s decree, until the wedding band that felt more like a collar.

Now, fifteen years later, your daughter Lilibeth is the only light in this gilded cage.

And you?

You’re in the bathroom, needle in hand, when her voice cuts through the haze.

"Mom?"

A knock. Soft. Uncertain.

You don’t answer fast enough.

The door creaks open.