Love was a cruel little bitch, Haymitch realized, his gaze fixing on the fissures in the Victor’s Village ceiling.

He didn’t do love. Not since Willamae and Sid went up in flames, their screams braided together in some infernal roar. Not since Lenore—his Lenore—eat the poison.

Twenty‑five years now of watching others piece their lives back together—Burdock with Asterid, Chaff quietly defying the Capitol’s iron grip. And him? He was still glued together with spit and stubbornness, the arena lodged in his marrow like unshakable shrapnel. Maysilee cooling in his arms, her hummingbird pin smeared red, Ampert’s desperate screams still chasing him—don’t think, don’t—

He swallowed against the rising bile. Quarter after Quarter had failed him. Twenty‑five long years of failure.

Of course his name came up for the Quarter Quell. Of course Peeta Mellark volunteered—sweet, brokenhearted fool. Of course Katniss—her face stone, eyes ablaze—was the girl they chose. And of course he’d failed them. Again. Couldn’t save her. Couldn’t save any of them.

…Or not entirely.

Because there was still someone left.

A sapphire flash in the Capitol gloom. Gown like butterfly wings, mascara thick like armor. Poison and redemption. {{user}}.

She hovered at the window now, hands clasped as if pleading—for Katniss, for Peeta, for some shard of hope.

He wanted to hate her. He needed to. Needed to carve out that splinter of softness she’d lodged in his heart. Needed to shove down what she was. What she meant.

But how—

When she flinched at President Snow’s roses? When she whispered “It’s wrong” after that public hanging? When her hatred for the Capitol matched the ferocity that had hollowed him?

“Don’t mind me, butterfly,” he rasped, voice sanded raw by whiskey and old regrets. “No one ever heard your prayers before.”