millarific

Fic: "A Simple Desultory Philippic" (Baltar - PG)

millarific — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 05:09:47 GMT

Title: A Simple Desultory Phillipic
Author: millari
Characters: Gaius Baltar
Words: 417
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
A/N: Exactly what the title says it is. A desultory little thing written for a recent challenge on bsg_epics prompted by the word "fear".

Please, just let it stop. Please, God. Gods. Any variant thereof. Please, just end this. End me, if you have to, but no more of this please, I can't.

I don't know what they want me to know. I never did. I don't know anything. I just wanted to be left in peace with my secrets, with my test tubes and my research.

All right, no. Fine, I admit it. Is that what you want to hear? Yes, I wanted to be special, wanted, admired. I've always wanted that. Since I was a boy. I wanted them all to know, for frak's sake, that I'm someone to take seriously.

But I never wanted to harm anyone. I didn't. I swear! Billions of souls murdered? I could never. Who could ever?

God?

Gods?

Whatever the frak you are.

Are you there?

I don't even know why I'm writing this. I don't believe in you. You don't exist, and I'm just going to tear this paper up into a million pieces once I'm finished, burn it if I can, because if anyone ever found it...

Gaeta is just sitting there, oblivious, swotting away over that asinine task I gave him that won't certainly won't be resulting in a functioning Cylon detector anytime soon. Does he know? No, he can't know; that earnest spaniel would say something.

But he'll ask one day, why the tasks don't add up. Then they'll start asking questions. And then what the frak am I going to do?

I can't take another day of feeling like this anymore, feeling afraid all the time. The waiting for the ax to drop, it's far, far worse, I think sometimes, than just going up to Roslin and blurting out the truth - that I ... that ~~I am responsible~~ ... that ~~I betrayed~~ ...

Am I in Tartarus, God? Am I your vanquished foe, thrown in here to endlessly be tantalized with another day of freedom that might be snatched away at any second, at the wrong word, the wrong result, the wrong bit of luck?

Because please, God, or whatever you are, if you have any pity at all in your heart, just end this, all right? I know that If you actually take me up on this offer, to kill me, I'll probably fight you when you try. But pay me no mind, all right? Just do the deed, and we'll consider ourselves evened out.

Just only please, whatever you do, please make it stop.

Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil (9/11) (Haymitch/Beetee - R)

millarific — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 04:14:16 GMT

Title: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil
Author: millari
Characters: Haymitch Abernathy, Mags, Beetee, Chaff, President Snow, Haymitch's Dad, Haymitch's Girl, OCs
Pairing: Haymitch/Beetee
Rating: R
Beta: The incomparable trovia
Warnings: Implied references to forced prostitution, canonical character deaths
Summary: On his victory tour, Haymitch soon finds out that the real Games have only just begun, and survival means learning to spin out a web of lies, compromises and self-destruction. The Games' oldest living victor and arguably its most intelligent one show him that even in the tainted life of a Victor, there are still ways to prevail.
A/N: This is a finished multi-chaptered work.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8

CHAPTER 9

At the victory banquet, they seat Haymitch at a table placed at the head of the reception room. He sits there like President Snow himself, with everyone coming to him to offer congratulations, to present tokens from the district, to request autographs, which he still finds incredibly weird – that anyone would suddenly value his signature.

Everyone important in the district is there, with one glaring exception that no one is talking about – District Three’s most recent victor.

“What?” he groans, as Lucilla turns in her seat and calls his name out of the blue, after a couple hours of pretty much ignoring him in favor of catching up on District Three gossip or something. Haymitch hadn't bothered to pay attention, still thinking about his conversation earlier with Beetee and the way that he stared at Haymitch during the interview.

“Nevil Laurenti is waving at you, go talk to him,” she orders, her bright pink fingernail pointing in a southeasterly direction after making a slight adjustment to her wig, which is dyed in exactly the same shade as her nails. It’s all the color of this emetic Haymitch once saw people drinking in the men’s room at a sponsor’s party that Lucilla made him attend. It had made them all throw up in less than thirty seconds.

“I already talked to him for two hours on camera, tonight,” he complains, still burning over Laurenti’s crack about District Twelve and Swagger. “What else could we possibly have to say to each other?”

She sighs heavily. “He's been the District Three interview host for years, and the victors here have him solidly in their corner, so for him to make overtures to you while in their district is a huge compliment. If you don't go over there now after he's called you publicly like that, you'll make an enemy out of him.”

He must look as unconvinced as he feels, because she feels compelled to add, “And unlike Caia Moulton, he actually listened to me when I mandated that he not ask you about your girlfriend, so you at least owe him thanks for that. Plus, he likes you,” she concludes. “You'll need him next year when you're a mentor and you're networking for sponsors. He knows a lot of people in the Capitol you could afford to be introduced to.”

His lips press together in a taut, thin line of acquiescence, cursing Lucilla for having reminded him of mentoring, the last thing he wants to be thinking about. But he drags himself out of the mammoth chair that was starting to make his legs go numb anyway and tries to reconfigure his face into something presentable before turning to his escort. “Do I look happy?” he asks her genuinely, although there's still enough buried anger in his voice that Lucilla's expression screws up with displeasure.

“Just try not to insult him,” she sighs, like she's given up on him. He keeps the smile plastered on his face anyway as he sits down next to Laurenti, because he's got nothing better.

“Mister Laurenti,” he tries to say with a hint of that lilt in his voice all Capitol residents seem to have in spades. He feels like an incompetent whore.

“Please,” the man replies, making it look easy. “Do call me Nevil. All my friends do.”

Haymitch just stops himself from raising a dubious eyebrow in front of the man.

“Friends?” he manages weakly, hating himself already. “So I can call on you during next year's Games as a sponsor?”

“Oh, you can call, my dear Haymitch,” he replies jovially. “But let's not get the horse out of the paddock before the race has started, all right?”

Shit. Now he thinks I’m desperate. Which, of course, he is.

“I can call you Haymitch, right?” It’s clear from Laurenti’s inflection that there was never any doubt in his mind that he could.

“Of course you can.” He then adds self-consciously, “Nevil.”

This fake familiarity seems like a small concession to make, if this man is the key to getting District Twelve some sponsorship money. He wishes for the millionth time that Swagger were around to help him figure out this mentoring thing. What is he going to do next year when he’s competing for sponsors against all those other mentors who know what they’re doing?

“Well, Haymitch,” Laurenti concludes with a meaningful smile, “I'd certainly be interested in discussing our options when you're in the Capitol next year. Perhaps over drinks?”

This is going far better than expected. He hasn't really done anything, hasn't even been paying full attention. He suppresses the urge to shrug awkwardly. “Uh, sure,” he says, kicking himself for sounding like the backwater kid from District 12 he is. But he’s determined to start next year with at least one useful notch on his mentor belt. “Of course, Nevil,” he revises, the man's odd name rolling off his tongue a little easier. “I'd like that.”

“Excellent,” Laurenti smiles. “I'll just arrange it all through Victor Affairs once you get into the Capitol. I look forward to it. I think with a little work, the two of us could become friends, couldn’t we?”

Haymitch nods uncertainly, knowing he should probably make more small talk, but he's shit at such things, and has no idea what to say next. Laurenti is at ease enough for both of them however, and starts talking again about something that Haymitch can’t help but tune out.

Friends. He’s never really had a friend, other than Jackson, who was his brother so that didn't count, and then well, Alsey, who was a lot like a friend, because she knew everything about him. But Haymitch kissed her sometimes, and that made it different. He remembers when his mom found out and started referring happily to Alsey as “your girl.”

He sometimes has wished for a male friend like Alsey, someone who knew everything about him like that. A guy to spend a lot of time with, like old Mal and Declan back home do.

Mal and Declan grew up together – best friends, their families neighbors on the edge of the Seam. You almost never saw those two apart, ever. They'd even moved in together when they'd hit their fifties, having outlived both their families and their capacity to work in the mines anymore. People always used to joke that any woman who married Mal or Declan would have to get married to both of them, for no woman would ever get between that friendship anyway.

They showed up regularly in the Hob, shopping together, finishing each other's sentences as they’d bicker over buying food and supplies. As a boy, he'd sometimes wonder what it was like to be that connected to another male like that.

But now, thoughts of Beetee fresh in his mind, the realization suddenly hits him: Mal and Declan aren't friends. Well, they're friends, definitely, but they're also a damn couple. Like Flax and Melio in District Eleven. It's perfectly obvious, now that he thinks about it. In fact, it's undeniable if you just look. But he's never allowed himself to.

He can’t want that, can he? Is that why he feels his nerves jangling every time Beetee looks at him? The question occurs to him with amazement and maybe a tinge of fear?

What does it mean about Alsey?

He has to work to stop himself from jumping a mile straight up when Laurenti breaks his thoughts, with an unexpected hand grabbing his. Haymitch doesn't want to touch this peacock, but he can tell that he has to, or else risk insulting him. He unconsciously bites his lip as he lets the man invade his space.

“You know,” he can’t help saying, hoping it’ll make Laurenti laugh instead of angry, “we victors didn’t win by letting someone take us unawares.” He shrugs at Laurenti’s warm, moist hand meaningfully, but he doesn’t shake it off like he really wants to.

“Point taken!” he says with indulgent delight, like Haymitch is a housecat that’s just shown its claws. “Don’t worry,” he adds, his tone still rife with amusement, as his hands stay right where they are. “I plan for you to be quite aware the next time I do that.”

In fact, Laurenti’s fingers move suggestively around Haymitch’s hand, and Haymitch feels a shot of alarm go through him, but then he realizes that Laurenti is not feeling him up, but pressing something very discreetly into his palm.

“A gift for you,” he whispers, his face altogether too close to Haymitch’s. “From someone who couldn’t be here. I should be jealous, but I suppose you're allowed a couple of flings before your schedule gets entirely filled up.”

His voice is still so conspiratorially low, Haymitch doubts for a second that any of this moment was even real. But then, as if to prove to him that it was, Laurenti squeezes Haymitch's hand closed into a fist around the note, leans back in his chair. He flicks his eyes suggestively towards the room's entrance. “A little naughtiness every now and then is needed in these times,” he concludes.

Haymitch blinks at him, eyes narrowed with bewilderment.

“Top secret,, Laurenti mouths at him, followed by a wink, then a magnanimous wave. “Go have fun, now. I'll see you in six months.”

So Haymitch stumbles away, his fist still closed tight on the paper, dying of curiosity as he heads back towards his table, where Lucilla is in some animated conversation with Lenta. He wants no part of it. Searching the room for ideas, he eventually turns on his heel and walks up to the buffet table and pretends to have trouble choosing which dish to sample next as he discreetly opens the small note in his palm.

To follow the trail, start by looking outside the arena.

That's all it says. His gaze searches the room for the man he knows must not be here anymore, but has escaped to the bugs-free place he'd referred to earlier this afternoon.

Follow the trail. What trail? How is he supposed to find it? And trail to what?

He thinks for a moment about Beetee's use of the word “arena”. Obviously there's no arena here, so what would he mean by that? He shuffles back towards his table to Lucilla and plops down in his seat with a distracted air.

“Well?” Lucilla interrogates him. “What did he say?”

“Who?” Haymitch asks, fingering the note hidden in his palm.

“Laurenti, of course!” Lucilla exclaims, her voice quickly ratcheting down to an exasperated hiss. “What did he want?”

“Oh, um, I don't know exactly. He invited me to have drinks with him next year during the Games.”

Lucilla doesn't quite manage to suppress an excited gasp. “Haymitch, that's wonderful!”

“Yeah?” He keeps the conversation going, but he's searching the room, trying to understand what Beetee meant.

“Of course!” she retorts, with a tone that suggests either she's insulted or he's inconceivably clueless.

“Don't you see? He's making a very overt show of favor, and he's basically promising to promote you next year during the Games. Why else would he want to talk to you then?”

Haymitch finally turns his head to her again. “Maybe. I dunno. He just invited me for drinks. I mean, we didn't even make a plan. He just said he'd call some people, some office, I think, to set it up. I wouldn't get your hopes up; he might not have really meant it.” He might be drunk right now.

“Victor Affairs,” she supplies the name in a clipped tone. “You need to know these things, Haymitch, if you're going to succeed next year.”

She gazes at him thoughtfully. “You know, we have two more districts to visit. I think we should probably start to have some tutoring sessions on the train rides. You don't have a mentor living with you in Twelve, which means once I'm gone, you'll have no one to prepare you for next year when you start guiding tributes. I don’t know everything about it, but I can give you some guidance on the basics …”

Haymitch shuts his brain off as she starts to lecture him about his new “learning curve” –whatever that means. He just doesn't want to even think about mentoring. And he really doesn't need Lucilla harping on the topic right now, not after yet another day of being surrounded by people who have to hear just the right thing all the time and whom he can't ever get mad at. And they all want something from him. It's all a little like being in the arena, where people pretend to be your allies and then without warning, can suddenly become …

The arena.

Of course. That's what the note meant. This is the arena. Get out of the arena. The excitement sets his heart pounding. And then, more abruptly than he meant to, Haymitch bolts up out of his chair.

“Where are you going?” Lucilla protests. “I'm talking to you!”

“I suddenly don't feel well.” His voice is quick, and distracted and probably not all that convincing. But he is moving too fast out of the room for her to make an effective countermove. “I'm going to find a place in here to get some air.” He turns away so she can't engage him. “I'll see you back in the room, all right?”

Before Lucilla can do anything substantial, he's already outside the banquet room and back in the entrance hall, looking around everywhere for the sign he knows must be there somewhere, telling him where to go. It takes him a few moments to notice the out-of-place Peacekeeper on the wide marble staircase, a few steps up, rubbing at something on the white walls with a rag and a bucket. He walks over to examine what she's doing. He sees from her profile how the woman's face is carved with supreme annoyance.

“What's going on?” he inquires.

The Peacekeeper whirls around, startled. She can't be more than a year or two older than Haymitch.

“Nothing, sir,” she says grimly, seeming to have fallen back on the rule that refusing to explain anything much is always the best policy. “It's nothing a little soap and water can't take away.”

“Who drew that?” The Peacekeeper is making slow progress at what looks like a chalk drawing of a huge arrow that points right and curves upward, as if to point the way up those marble stairs.

“Heck if I know,” the guard shrugs, eyes settling back onto her task. “But whoever did it, they didn't use chalk, I'll tell you that much.” She examines the gray, swirling mess she's made with the water staining the walls. “It's like they used charcoal or something.”

At that, a smile overtakes Haymitch's entire face. He says nothing further, but begins running up the stairs, eyes peeled for the next sign on the trail, jittery with both excitement and uncertainty He doesn't know what the fuck he is doing.

He makes it up to the landing on the top floor of the building before he spots another one, this time, an absurd stick figure with slits for eyes that make it look sleepy, smoking a very thick cigarette, or possibly a cigar. Haymitch gazes at it puzzled for a moment, until it occurs to him that what he took at first to be a rendering of sparking ashes from the thing in its mouth actually is a series of small arrow heads, all pointing in the same direction, to the left. He follows it, hoping he's understood correctly.

The signs come again, much more quickly now. This time, it's a nonsensical bunch of letters and numbers, painted on a door in the same black dust. He stares at the mumbo-jumbo for a second, confused, but opens the door anyway and he sees an exit to a set of ugly, white concrete stairs that lead further upward. Huh. He thought he was already as high up as this building goes.

It's only as he's climbing the stairs that he finally remembers where he's seen that jumble of letters and numbers before, and he shakes his head, chuckling. He had to memorize that string of letters and numbers in school when he was ten. In a rare streak of almost fun, his teacher, Miss Hawthorne, had made them learn a song to help them commit it to memory:

It's the chemical formula for coal.

The rest of the signs are even funnier. The first, on a door out the stairwell that leads Haymitch back again into the heart of the building and into a much smaller hallway that only takes up half the floor space, is the most intricate drawing yet, of a stick figure wearing something on its head and standing inside some rectangular thing with crudely-drawn wheels. He laughs out loud this time: he's looking at Beetee's representation of Haymitch in his chariot and stupid miner's headlamp in the Tribute Parade.

He presses on, his anxiety over this meeting diminishing.

A drawing of him on a wall in the ridiculous cape they'd made him wear for his victory interview with Flickerman is only slightly less funny than the stick figure of Flickerman himself, who is looking dramatically at the ceiling in a strangely accurate rendering, his childishly-drawn, wide-open mouth taking up more than half his face. Stick-figure Haymitch's long cape, as if fluttering in a non-existent wind, is shaped in an obvious arrow pointing the way around the corner and down the hall.

The final door bears a last stick figure, this one of Haymitch with the victory crown around his head, arms raised up in the air, as if in triumph. At his feet, another stick figure lies on the ground, with two X's for eyes. His grin falls away, though, as soon as he sees the tiny representation of an ax embedded in the dead stick figure's chest, which is also wearing a crown, one much larger than Haymitch's.

He's pretty sure he knows who that figure is supposed to be. If anyone ever finds it, they'll probably both be dead.

He creaks the door open and steps halfway inside.

“Forget crazy,” he tells the District 3 victor waiting for him inside, on an old wicker chair towards the back of the modest, windowless room. “You just left crazy a thousand kilometers ago,” he grunts. “You’re downright insane.”

“Eh, don't worry about it,” Beetee smirks, looking pleased with himself. “It'll be a day or two before anyone would notice all the drawings up here. By then, I'll have washed them off.”

“What is this room, anyway?”

Beetee shrugs. “A room nobody remembers, just under the attic. Most importantly,” he spreads his arms wide, “a room no one has ever thought to bug.”

Haymitch's eyebrows rise. “But someone lives here?” he asks, casting an eye towards the rough-hewn wooden chest of drawers, the matching tiny wardrobe, the writing desk and the bed stripped of sheets. The dark-stained floor is made of wide, scuffed, wooden planks with deep grooves on them that have warped the floor over time, so that it creaks as Haymitch walks fully inside and closes the door.

“Nah, not anymore,” Beetee says, unconcerned. “I think this used to be the janitor's quarters or something, but nobody's used it in years now. Nor bugged it.” He shrugs. “Whiskey?” He pulls out a bottle from under his chair and extends it towards Haymitch with a smirk.

Haymitch shakes his head. “I don't drink,” he says, and Beetee makes a chagrined face, but then shrugs and puts it back under the chair.

“So listen,” Haymitch begins abruptly, before the other victor can say something again, “I don't know why you've led me here, but ...”

“You know exactly why,” Beetee cuts him off with mock reproach. “We talked about it in Snow's quarters. Don't act like you don't remember that.” He grins, his voice turning just a bit sultry. “I’m counting on you remembering that.”

Startled, Haymitch defaults to a scowl, and turns his gaze to the wall. After a few very long moments of silence, he declares, “you want to fuck.” He's hoping to scare the other man off. But Beetee merely answers without embarrassment:

“Yes. That was the general idea.”

Haymitch exhales, as if he's been holding his breath for who knows how long. He struggles for something to say, then finally gives up. “Why?” he asks. He still won't look; it’s too awkward to look.

“Why?” Beetee echoes, his voice pitching upwards, like it's the last question he expected.
“Because it'd be fun?” he offers. “They do have fun over there in Twelve, right? Or has Snow taken that privilege away from you poor folk too?”

When he looks, Beetee is staring at him with a shit-eating grin. He has no right to look so damn confident in this situation when Haymitch feels so lost.

“Oh, listen: why don't you go fuck yourself?” he snarls, secretly enjoying how the smug expression on Beetee's face falls away, like he wasn't expecting Haymitch to snap back at him like that. It's nice to get the jump on this guy for once.

“I'd rather fuck you,” Beetee recovers quickly.

Haymitch blinks and stares at him a long moment. “Aw, shit, Corelli ...” he begins, but Beetee is already up in his personal space, warm breath on his skin, a possessive grip on his shoulders. The unexpected physical contact makes his heartbeat feel like it's pounding out of his chest. It's a little like a moment back home, when you know a guy is just about to throw a punch at you; but obviously, that's not what Beetee has in mind here.

“Why are you even ...” he trails off with a growl, but it's a bit of a helpless gesture. He doesn't move either.

“Why do you think?” It's actually fun the way Beetee rolls his eyes towards the ceiling, even though Haymitch can tell everything the man does is always in part to amuse himself. “Because you're hot. I've thought so since your Games.”

He reaches out to pull Haymitch's chin towards him. “Not many people impress me. I find it kind of a turn-on.”

That does it. Haymitch can feel the heat prickling up his neck, flushing his cheekbones.

He feels himself being led the last inch or two left to cross, straight into a hard, possessive kiss. He doesn't even remember giving in to Beetee's exploratory tongue pushing apart his lips, doesn't remember responding with his own tongue, just realizes he's there, the two of them are going at each other like a couple of kids in the bushes.

Their mouths are hot and frantic, each trying to take control of the kissing, caught in a stalemate that neither of them seems to mind. In between gulps of air, Haymitch feels Beetee hard against his thigh and notices that he's just as turned on by this, when he should be scared out of his mind, and somehow, it is this that awakens him to what they are doing.

He yanks away his mouth, and they just stare at each other, their faces close enough to still hear each other's breathing.

“What?” Beetee's eyebrows raise, as if daring Haymitch, as if he think this is all hilarious. “Never kissed a guy before?”

Haymitch looks at him, incredulous. “With who?” His voice is more husky than he'd intended. “Thirteen's smoking ashes, Latier, we just don't do that sort of thing in Twelve.”

“Well, somebody does, obviously,” Beetee says matter-of-factly.

“No!” Haymitch practically shouts at him. “Nobody does!” But his mind flashes to images of Mal and Declan, and the newfound realization that this is in fact a lie.

“Oh come on,” Beetee challenges. “Are you telling me there's no one in all of Twelve who prefers sex with their own gender? You know that's statistically impossible, right? ”

Haymitch's legs back him away from the man until his body finds the nearest wall for support. What he just did felt good, sure, he can't deny that, but he’s never had to consider whether he might ever be interested in this.

“Admit it,” Beetee interrupts his thoughts. “You liked it. Come on, I felt your hard-on against my leg.”

Haymitch feels his body freeze. It would be a hell of an accusation in Twelve, and he has to remind himself that he’s not about to get the shit kicked out of him right now.

“Yeah, and I felt yours!” he snaps, with residual defensiveness he can’t quite suppress. “What of it?” He waves his hand around in a helpless, confused gesture. “Look,” he tries, “just because I got ...” But he can't say the words turned on or hard to Beetee and have them hanging in the air between them; it's just too weird. He and Alsey never used words like that.

“I …” he trails off, unable to lie. “Fuck.”

A beat passes.

“Well, give me some time, Haymitch. Nobody's that good.”

“Oh, will you cut the crap for just a fucking minute, Latier?” he roars. His shoulders curl inward. What the fuck? He just was kissing a guy, by choice.

“I need to figure this out,” he growls.

“Hey …” This time, Beetee’s tone is softer, as if being cautious with him, but out of kindness, not out of fear or awkwardness.

“Haymitch,” he probes, “I'm sorry, all right? I really thought you'd like it.” When Haymitch doesn't answer, he adds, “You okay?”

But Haymitch is thinking about old Mal and Declan again. Inside their home, where no one could see, they were kissing like this? Touching each other, getting hard off each other, like he and Beetee just did? He tries to picture them lying in a bed together.

“Haymitch?” he repeats, but Haymitch just slides down to the ground with his back against the wall, knees pulled up in front of him.

“Of course I liked it,” he says in a small voice, forcing himself to keep the man's eye now. He at least owes him that, he supposes, after the guy put himself out there like that. “But … my girlfriend.” He almost chokes on it.

Beetee's eyes grow pensive.

“Are you afraid you'll be betraying her memory by being attracted to me?” he asks quietly.

He smiles wanly. “No, it’s not like that. She’s … she's dead. He swallows an abrupt sob.

“She's dead,” he repeats quietly. “She wouldn't get mad about me sleeping with you after she's gone. She'd want me to be happy. Besides, she always thought you were the bee's knees.”

“She what?” Beetee says, apparently not recognizing the Twelve expression.

“She saw your Games,” Haymitch explains. “Was a big fan of how you won with your extra special brains.”

He realizes too late he's given Beetee an opening for another round of annoying boasting about his genius brain. But Beetee just turns his back to the same wall as Haymitch and slides down onto the floor next to him. He raises his arm slowly towards Haymitch’s shoulders, a courteous warning. “Do you mind?”

Haymitch just shakes his head as he lets Beetee’s arm curl around him. They sit there in silence.

“Actually, she'd laugh her ass off at the idea.” he says.

“What idea?”

“Of us. Us sleeping together.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Don’t tell me that’s the best seduction line you’ve got?”

But there's not the same heat behind Beetee’s gaze as before, just an amused twinkle in his eyes. Haymitch can't believe the words are coming out of his mouth, but he says them anyway:

“Could we just lie on the bed together a while?” he asks, a bit terrified, but telling himself, You survived nearly getting your fucking intestines ripped out of your body, you can handle this. He really wants to touch Beetee.

The silence as Beetee examines him is so long, Haymitch has to fight off a rising wave of slight, panicked embarrassment. What if he’s changed his mind? But then the arm around him tightens and prods him onto his feet, and Beetee leads him over to the bed without a word. He seems to be waiting for Haymitch to make the first move onto the bed itself, but Haymitch can't make himself, just stands there looking down at the bare mattress, Beetee's arm still around him.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” Beetee asks him, the calm patience in his voice belied by an undertone of uncertainty, as if this wasn't at all what he bargained for when he lured Haymitch here tonight. And of course, how could it be?

“Yeah, I want this,” he grunts, closes his eyes in embarrassment and all in one movement, pulls Beetee down onto the bed, the way he used to jump straight into the lake back home, instead of wading in and gradually getting used to the icy-cold water. He hears a chuckle muffled into the mattress as Beetee adjusts his body into alignment with Haymitch, who is lying on his back.

“Good.” Already Haymitch can’t remember whose voice it was that said that – his or Beetee’s. But Beetee is carefully putting Haymitch's hand in his and the two of them then stare at the ceiling a while, not saying anything at all, and it’s somehow exactly what Haymitch needs right now. Eventually, Haymitch turns to look at Beetee, who must notice that he’s done so, but continues to look up at the ceiling, and for once, makes no snappy comments.

While he's not a Capitol fashion model or anything, Haymitch can't deny that Beetee is attractive, still fit from his Games – arms that are muscular, modest bulges showing through the arms of his suit jacket, a slim face, but it doesn't look half-starved like so many people in the Seam. His hair is dark and straight, but it hints at curls like Haymitch’s if only he would let his hair grow out more. His skin is much darker than Haymitch’s.

When it becomes undeniable that Haymitch is openly staring at him, Beetee looks down and locks their eyes together, like he did on stage with Laurenti. But this time, Haymitch is drawn into those deep brown, almost black pools fastening onto him, and he turns fully on his side too, meeting Beetee with a steady gaze.

“What?” Beetee eventually asks, more tentative than he usually does. Instead of answering, Haymitch surprises himself by reaching out to touch Beetee's chest. He doesn't dare do any more than experimentally run his fingers along the buttons of his shirt, but then Beetee grabs Haymitch's hand and takes a finger into his mouth, sucking with a lightness that feels strange and electric. He feels himself melt with it, and utters a completely unplanned grunt, until he realizes he's had his eyes closed for the last several seconds. When he opens them, Beetee is holding the fingers of his left hand in mid-
air and searching his face for confirmation.

Is this all right?, his expression asks, and Haymitch nods his head yes, because he's already finding himself addicted to the idea of Beetee touching him more.

“Do the kissing thing again,” he says gruffly, to break the spell, and because he can't get himself to say it any other way without it sounding strange in his own ears.

Beetee chuckles, and some of his teasing lilt is back. “Well, if it's an order, then.” His voice has a slight, lazy slurring quality, and Haymitch feels the back of Beetee's knuckles trail along his cheek in an affectionate way. Then he's pulling his right arm out from under himself, a bit awkwardly, and makes a soft semi-circle around the crown of Haymitch's head, fingers landing on the back of his neck. His arm is soon fully around his body, and Haymitch is being tugged in closer, until Beetee's tongue is parting Haymitch's lips, taking possession of his mouth for several seconds until Haymitch even remembers that he can respond.

It's not all that different than what he's experienced with Alsey, actually, except that Alsey was never this aggressive, never this obviously experienced; Haymitch isn't this experienced either, and he struggles to keep up, afraid of looking stupid, because his body is telling him that he really, really wants this to continue. He experiments with seeking out places in Beetee's mouth, trying to spark the same desire Beetee is making him feel, but the man is so determined, so sure about what he wants from Haymitch, that Haymitch eventually gives up and starts to relax under the kisses, and instead, starts investigating the rest of the man's body, possibilities occurring to him through the slow molasses of arousal his brain has become. He frees both his arms and wraps them around Beetee's back, tugging at the tail of his soft, cotton shirt, tucked neatly into his pants. He craves the feel of warm skin under his fingers, craves touch.

He runs his hands under Beetee's liberated shirt, and lets his fingers wander along the man's spine, pausing to feel the outline of his back muscles, exploring as far down as he can in this position, daring to grab the man's ass and press their groins together, something he never, ever dared try with Alsey. He hears a satisfying, small gasp from Beetee, muffled by their mouths pressed together. Beetee pulls away for a moment to utter a throaty, whispered plea.

“Oh, do that again. Please.”

Haymitch grunts, because the onslaught of kisses has been making his whole body feel weak with desire, and it’s work to not feel awkward about grabbing the man’s ass, as very much as he’s enjoying that. He pushes them together, this time his crotch grinding into Beetee's, riding out the kisses that way, feeling such an increase of pressure in his groin, so fast, it's almost staggering when Beetee starts undoing the collar of Haymitch's shirt, moving his lips downward, kissing his chin, then his neck, as the rest of the buttons of Haymitch's shirt come undone under Beetee's deft fingers. He shimmies the rumpled thing off Haymitch's arms and onto the bed as he runs his hands up the sides of Haymitch's body, sending more jolts of electricity coursing through him. Haymitch's head falls back and he lets out an embarrassingly high-pitched moan, but it's all getting too much, too fast, for him to care. He's a bundle of pinpointing desire all over, and he's never felt turned on like this before, never with his whole body like this.

Which is probably why he hasn't noticed until now that Beetee has managed to undo his belt and his pants, and has got them half off his ass. It takes him only a second later to panic.

“No, I can't!” he shouts, placing a firm hand onto Beetee's shoulder to push him away. “Wait, wait!”

To his credit, Beetee stops immediately. In fact, he freezes, his hands still fisted in a piece of the satin black trousers Haymitch’s team made him wear tonight. They both sit up on the bed, Beetee's eyes oddly wide with what looks to Haymitch like fear, or maybe worry.

“What is it? Something I did?” He really does sound like Haymitch has scared him half to death as he jumps off the bed, like he’s trying to give Haymitch space. “Did I do something wrong? Are you all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I'm okay,” Haymitch exhales deeply, feeling terribly embarrassed now. He stands up to be closer to Beetee, to reassure him, even though his pants are still hanging off his body in a fairly undignified way. “You didn't do anything wrong. It's just … when you opened up my pants, I ...started thinking about ...” He doesn't know how to say it.

Beetee's eyes search his with obvious concern that quickly turns to chagrin. “Oh, Haymitch,” he breathes. “Shit, already? Seriously? I'm really sorry. I had no idea.”

“Had no idea about what?” Haymitch's confusion for the moment damps down his embarrassment.

Beetee's eyes narrow. “So when you panicked,” he begins slowly, in an interrogatory tone. “That was because ...”

“Because I don't know at all what I'm doing,” Haymitch admits, running a nervous hand over his head, through the stiff hairspray in his curls. “I mean, I've never had sex with a guy before. I don't know what comes next, or what to do.”

The laughter falls out of Beetee like a tray of glasses smashing on the ground, discordant and with jagged gasps of amazement. “That's why you got upset?”

“Look, I'm not an idiot,” Haymitch grumbles. “I’ve just never done this before. How am I supposed to know what to do?”

There's a weak grin on Beetee's face now, like he still hasn't quite recovered. “No, no, you're right. Of course! That's perfectly sensible thinking, Haymitch. How would you know?”

He pauses and takes Haymitch's face between his hands and examines him. “Let's be really clear on this, shall we? I don't want you to do anything you don't want to, got it? Anything you don't want, you tell me stop, and we stop, all right? That's very important to me.”

“Well, of course,” Haymitch says, bewildered at the question. “Why wouldn't I tell you?”

Now it's Beetee's turn to look bewildered, but Haymitch can see him moving fast to cover. “Of course,” he agrees a little too strongly. “Of course you'd tell me. Because this is supposed to be fun, right?”

Haymitch nods. “Well, yeah,” he says, since nothing could be more obvious. There's something definitely odd about Beetee's reaction. “A9re you getting at something?”

He watches him take in a deep breath, then turn and exhale it. “Later, all right? At the moment, I don't want to distract from this lovely time we're having.” The smug, bantering Beetee is already making a quick comeback. “And as for your inexperience in these matters ...” The teasing grin on his face has already completely smoothed over any rough edges in his demeanor a minute ago. “I'll explain as we go, right?”

Haymitch raises his eyebrows at him as he stands up. “Only if your pants are off too.”

“Excuse me?”

Haymitch grunts under his breath with embarrassment, but on this point, he's adamant: “I'm not gonna be the only one with his pants down,” he declares.

The way the man is pursing his lips, it's clear that he's trying to suppress a laugh. But then he stands up straight, radiating a sober expression that Haymitch doesn’t quite believe. “An excellent principle in this sort of situation,” he affirms.

“Are you making fun of me?” Haymitch accuses, ready to be annoyed.

He blinks in surprise. “No, not at all. Not at all.” And he’s so genuine, Haymitch does believes that right away. “Indeed, you make a very good point.”

“Well, then?” he casts a meaningful glance downward at Beetee’s pants. He's treated to another of Beetee's chuckles, but without another word, the man is making off with clothes. Once Haymitch can see that he's serious, he takes off the rest of his own clothes, and in less than a minute, the two of them are facing each other, naked as the day they were born.

“So, now what?” Haymitch almost says, when the silence between them turns good and awkward, but new to this or not, he's not going to let himself look completely like a helpless idiot, so he makes the first move and gets good and close to Beetee again, trying out on him the one thing he knows he likes doing to himself.

Still, he can't help how tentatively he reaches out to take the man's erect dick in his hand. But as he starts to stroke it back and forth, learning the curves of it, finding the spots that make Beetee respond with something between a moan and a sigh, Haymitch feels his mouth curve into a pleased smile. He uses his other hand to grab Beetee's ass again, deciding he definitely likes that. As he'd hoped, Beetee makes a hissing sound of enjoyment.

“I think you lied to me,” Beetee says, taking Haymitch's dick in his hand too, “about never having done this before.” It’s a blatant lie, but Haymitch doesn’t care. The two of them stand there, their clothes in piles around them on the floor, stroking each other until it starts to feel so good, they slump into each other, too weak to stand upright.

“Come on,” Beetee suggests. “Let's take this to the bed.”

They expand into new territory, mixing the hot, sloppy exploration of each other's mouths with hands learning all the spots on each others' bodies – which to graze lightly or which to manhandle, which to suck on or to grab. They make each other cry out, moan, demand more. Haymitch learns fast that Beetee likes having his nipples rubbed with Haymitch’s index finger and that he likes it when Haymitch grinds their hips together. He wraps a leg around Haymitch's groin and pulls the lower half of his body in close and squeezes them together, their dicks rubbing up against each other in very satisfying friction. As they thrust at each other, Beetee hisses, “yesss” over and over in his ear, and that elicits desperate moans from Haymitch himself. At some point, he realizes he’s stopped thinking about the fact that this is a guy getting him off like this, and he revels in all the naked skin there is for him to touch.

And the certainty that the two of them are going to come very, very soon.

When they do come, only a minute later, Beetee sighs deeply, face buried in Haymitch's chest.

“I don't think technically, two guys giving each other handjobs is supposed to feel that good. Fuck, Haymitch.”

Haymitch's snort conveys surprise, amusement, but also a touch of pride. “Yeah, that was the general idea,” he deadpans.

Beetee's head darts up with just a flicker of wide-eyed surprise, then gives him one of those grins that Haymitch is just starting to feel comfortable with calling 'hot’ in his head. When the man laughs, Haymitch feels infinitely powerful, to have brought that sound out of him.

“Quoting my own words back at me, eh?” he teases. “ 'Clever Haymitch' indeed.”

He feels warm and sweaty and blissfully exhausted. He hasn't felt this good in months, in fact. But the moniker threatens to ruin all of it.

“Call me that again, and I'll clock you,” he mock-warns, reluctant to ruin the moment with a real warning.

Beetee grins. “Done,” he says, then adds mischievously, “Clever Haymitch.”

Haymitch pushes away the growing discomfort. “You smug bastard,” he grouses, and lunges for Beetee, pinning him down under him, but the other victor squirms and tries to wriggle completely free, sending the two of them off the bed and crashing onto the floor.

They both freeze.

“Shit,” Haymitch says in a whisper. “Do you think anyone heard that?”

Beetee's eyes dart nervously from side to side. “Nah. Probably not.” But his voice is less carefree now.

“Still, Snow specifically warned all us victors not to make contact with you. So I'm pretty sure if I get caught fucking you, he'll have my ass, and I really don't want to be in that position again.”

“Again?”

Beetee looks away, grabbing his clothes from off the floor, wiping himself clean with a sock. “Never mind,” he says, throwing on his outfit. “Let me go check that the coast is clear. Get dressed, just in case anyone’s coming.”

Haymitch hurriedly stumbles into his rumpled, hopelessly wrinkled formal wear, just barely keeping himself from falling in his haste. “We’re not going to be fooling anyone if they’re out there,” he hisses after Beetee, who is already standing impatiently at the door, waiting for Haymitch to finish.

Beetee waves off his protests, and opens the door in a tentative gesture, then throws himself out into the hallway, shutting the door behind him. Haymitch stands in the middle of the sparse room, legs shifting back and forth, waiting. He knows rationally that only about sixty seconds have passed, but it feels a lot longer when Beetee pokes his head back in.

“Yeah, we're fine,” he assures Haymitch. “But come up on the roof with me anyway.”

Part of him is so sleepy from his orgasm, he just wants to crawl into bed. But he’s gone this far with the man already, and he isn't ready yet to stop being around him.

“Okay.” He thrusts his hands in his pockets and follows Beetee out into the hallway.

Fic: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil (8/11) (Haymitch/Beetee - R)

millarific — Wed, 28 May 2014 23:43:05 GMT

Title: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil (8/11)
Author: millari
Characters: Haymitch Abernathy, Mags, Beetee, Chaff, President Snow, Haymitch's Dad, Haymitch's Girl, OCs
Pairings: Haymitch/Beetee
Rating: R
Beta: The lovely trovia
Warnings: Implied references to forced prostitution, canonical character deaths
Summary: On his victory tour, Haymitch soon finds out that the real Games have only just begun, and survival means learning to spin out a web of lies, compromises and self-destruction. The Games' oldest living victor and arguably its most intelligent one show him that even in the tainted life of a Victor, there are still ways to prevail.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7

CHAPTER 8
They arrive in District Three, and as usual, there is no victor there to greet them, only the Mayor, a balding man in his forties wearing a suit and tie and a crisply starched white shirt. His three assistants walk with him with varying degrees of interest and deference. The woman is introduced to Haymitch as the Mayor's chief of staff. The two men are not introduced at all. Glaringly not here is Three's most current victor, Beetee Latier, whom Lucilla has said will be present at the banquet.

He thinks of Mags and her warning that Snow has told all the victors not to talk to him. He'll be lucky to get two sentences out of Latier.

District Three’s mayor, Timothy Robinson, walks with long, brisk strides, as if determined to get this over with. The Mayor’s assistants, all in tailored suits like him, keep their faces neutral.

“We have some very nice accommodations here for the victors each year in the Justice Hall,” Robinson says blandly. “Not as nice as the Capitol of course, but we are the ones who invent all the mechanical marvels you surely experienced there, so we do all right.”

“Those gadgets in the Capitol were pretty amazing,” Haymitch replies, just as blandly for the journalists’ cameras, which are following them every step of the way. He turns an obligatory gaze towards the skyline, where off in the distance, he can see actual small skyscrapers here that he hadn't noticed when they had been approaching the district, because he couldn't be bothered to look out the train windows. These are not the impossibly tall skyscrapers of the Capitol, but still impressive. There is also something like a train passing by in the distance, although it's running much, much slower than the Capitol trains do and is not as gleaming, but more plainly functionally gray. This district is the most modern district he's seen so far, and it seem even better off than Four.

“The monorail brings our workers every day from their homes to the factories and the research buildings behind us, Mister Abernathy.”

The Chief of Staff must have been following his eyes. She has short, slightly spiky dark hair, in a style that also seems immensely Capitol, but yet is far too tasteful for that. For starters, it's all one color, and not a blinding color at that. She's dressed smartly in a woman's version of the men's dress suits. When she points over her shoulder into the distance, he notices the brick and glass buildings arranged on either side of the city’s skyline.

"It is our honored task to provide the Capitol with the machines that make life easier and more enjoyable,” Robinson interjects with a stiff air that sounds rather rehearsed to Haymitch. “We have over 3,000 people alone working every day in those factories you see over there.” Haymitch idly wonders for how many years of journalist packs he’s said this, as Robinson gestures at the wide brick buildings, the ones all grouped on west side.

“I'm sure it is your honored task,” Haymitch replies eventually, his tone just on the edge of sarcasm, as close as he dares. Even from this distance, the buildings look sparkling clean compared to the only brick building in District Twelve – an ancient, shabby governmental building where the bricks pop out every once in a while, and one can stick one's fingers into holes formed by missing mortar.

“Wait, though,” he blurts out, distracted from his darkening mood by a sudden, surprising realization. “How can they be factories? There's no smoke coming out of their chimneys.”

The statement comes out as an accusation without him meaning to. And in fact, as soon as the words come out of his mouth, it occurs to him that he has zero interest in discussing this. But oh well, he supposes he has nothing else to do until they reach the Justice Hall anyway, and well, great, he’s just played into the country bumpkin from District Twelve cliché, he realizes, as the journalists around him fail to hold back some muted titters at his ignorance.

“Haymitch, of course they're factories,” Lucilla admonishes, making it clear that she thinks he's being rude. It's the first thing she's said since they got off the train and she greeted the Mayor. “What else would those buildings be?” Haymitch does at least find it gratifying that she says this with the slightly uncertain air of someone who has only read a book about such things.

“There's no smoke because they're running on solar and wind power,” pipes up the Mayor's third assistant, who's been carrying around a clipboard the whole time and hasn't said a word since they met him and Lucilla at the train. Now that Haymitch notices him, he sees how he's much younger than the other ones. In fact, he seems only a few years older than Haymitch. He sizes the young man up anew: dark skin, dark, close-cropped hair that is obediently held in place, but would probably go wild and tangled if allowed to grow. The young man’s inquisitive eyes observe Haymitch through thick, black-framed glasses whose round shape vaguely remind him of miner's goggles, and the quirk of a smile on the man's lips makes him look like he is thinking of a private joke Haymitch isn't smart enough to fathom.

Or maybe he's just laughing at Haymitch, too backward to know about things like solar and wind power.

“Mayor Robinson was actually the one to propose the idea of alternative power in District Three, back forty years ago,” he explains. “Thanks to his innovations, we were able reduce our use of precious Capitol coal stocks, which leaves more for the Capitol's increasing need as the years go by. And the virtually limitless accessibility of sun and wind power here in Three has allowed us to increase our productivity for the Capitol tenfold.”

The young man then writes something down on his clipboard, turning away so Haymitch can't see his expression.An inexplicable feeling washes over him that maybe the young man isn't writing anything but scribbles down on that clipboard. All the while, Robinson keeps up a dutifully steady stream of patter about District Three inventions with Lucilla, along the lines of Did you know we invented the ... until they reach the Justice Hall.

The accommodations they lead Haymitch to are predictably luxurious, with dark red velvet and dark wood everywhere. The rugs are plush and woven into intricate decorations, and they take him to a spacious bedroom with all the usual luxuries – a large bed, a sumptuous and gleaming-white bathroom, the electronic meal menu in the wall, and a large, flat viewscreen as well, to watch the Games Channel and a few other entertainment channels broadcast from the Capitol. It's all pretty standard and boring by now, so as soon as they leave him alone, Haymitch takes refuge in the shower, where the water is of a welcome intensity and temperature. He spends a long time in there, pondering the intricate knobs and switches embedded into the tiled walls, wondering what life in a district like this is like, where they have luxury and education. He bets they even have lighting all twenty-four hours of the day.

He wanders back into the main room, his naked body wrapped in a soft, snow-white towel, and is so unusually relaxed by the warm water that it takes him a good ten seconds before he nearly jumps out of his skin: A silent figure is standing in his room, about five feet from the door.

The man standing there, whom he now finally recognizes as the Mayor's youngest assistant with the clipboard, silently holds up his finger to his mouth. With a broad grin, he gestures towards the clothes Haymitch had laid out for himself, curving his fingers in a repeated upward motion that orders Haymitch to put them on and be quick about it. He then returns the warning index finger to his lips. Haymitch is torn between outrage at the invasion of his privacy and curiosity as to where this will go.

True to form, curiosity wins out.

The man leads him out the door into the hallway and towards the elevator. Haymitch runs a hand through his wet, tousled hair as they enter, the assistant still issuing a warning to stay quiet. The elevator pulls upward all the way to the top floor with just a quiet imbalance in Haymitch's stomach.

When the lit, numbered triangles above the elevator door show that they have reached the building's top floor, an unobtrusive chime rings out and the elevator stops. But the doors do not open until the man types in a code into a keypad. In the hallway, Haymitch sees that this entire floor is empty except for one door to one room. He can't imagine one room taking up this entire floor.

But it basically does. One door, with no knob, just a hole inset into the wall to the left at face height. The man leading Haymitch pulls out from his pocket a small piece of some kind of film with an image on it that Haymitch can't quite see. He holds the film up close to the hole, which then makes the door open. They enter the room, and the door closes behind them of its own accord.

All right,” the man says with a loud exhale of accomplishment, with more than a touch of smugness. “Now we can talk.”

One look around at this huge, luxurious room, and he realizes that it’s even more expansive than the Training Center accommodations both he and Maysilee were given to share in the Capitol. Who in District Three is important enough to warrant this kind of room? Mayor Robinson, possibly, but as Haymitch looks around, it's quickly obvious that this room isn't lived in.

“Where are we?” he asks, leaving out the fuck in his head out of some minor concession to politeness. “And who are you?” Haymitch demands, when the man still hasn’t replied. He wonders why he hasn't insisted on finding this out before he followed the man out of his room. Why has he been willing to go along with all this man's silent orders all the way to the top floor, to a room that's clearly off-limits?

Right. Curiosity. Which killed the cat or whatever.

“We are in the quarters,” crows the man, gesturing expansively around at all the open space, “reserved solely for the use of President Coriolanus Snow when he visits District Three.”

For a second, Haymitch just gapes at him. “Shit. Are you serious?”

The man raises his eyebrows suggestively. “I couldn't be more serious. Wouldn't be any fun if it weren't the truth, now would it?”

“Fun?” Haymitch chokes. “You realize that us just being in this room must break about twenty laws, right?”

“So?” the man leans against the wall near the door, looking fucking jaunty standing there. “No one will ever know.”

Oh, they're so fucked. He just looks up at the ceiling and gestures wordlessly with his hands up there. The man watches him with a bemused expression, like he doesn't understand, but Haymitch knows he damn well does. “Oh fuck it,” he exclaims, dropping the pretense. “They know now!” He points up again at the ceiling, even though he can't see the bugs he knows must be there somewhere.

But the man just shakes his head. “President Snow's quarters,” he repeats with a quirk of his lips. “Not a single bug in here.”

Haymitch's forehead wrinkles. “You don’t know that!”

“Well, if you were President Snow, would you bug your own quarters?”

Scowling, Haymitch hedges a bit. “Maybe. If I wanted to record my conversations with other people in this room,” he challenges.

The man cocks his head. “Fair point. But I still win, because I know for a fact that there aren't any, because my father set up all the bugs in this building forty years ago, and maintained them ever since until it became my job.”

Haymitch's eyes widen, then narrow. How incredibly fucked-up to install and maintain the surveillance equipment the government uses to spy on you. “You mean you listen in on people for the Capitol?” he says with ready disgust.

“Nah,” he dismisses him with an eye roll. “The bugs relay everything to some listening station in the Capitol. They don't let me do that part. Otherwise, there'd be no point, right?”

“But how can you be okay with doing that?” Haymitch blurts out, then stops himself, realizing for all he knows, the guy is a Capitol sympathizer. He works with the Mayor after all. Haymitch tells himself he should probably be shutting his mouth right about now.

But the man just shrugs, pushing his glasses back against his head. “Haymitch, in this world, saying yes to something you hate gives you the power to say no to other things you hate even more. Besides, I've done worse.”

“Worse?” Haymitch echoes in surprise. “Like what?”

“I think killing a bunch of children for the televised amusement of a bunch of social parasites ranks a little higher in the worse department,” he says, his tone suddenly stripped down. “Don’t you?”

“Oh.” Haymitch looks away a second. Then it finally hits him. “You’re a victor?”

The man straightens up, practically puffing his chest out with mock, self-ironic pride. “Beetee Latier, 47th Hunger Games victor, at your service. I have to say, I'm a little wounded that you didn't recognize me right away.”

“So you decided the thing to do about that was to sneak into my room while I was showering?” Haymitch retorts.

“That was just for fun,” he shrugs. “And I got a very pleasing eyeful besides.”

Haymitch notices a second too late that Beetee Latier, 47th Hunger Games victor, has just flirted with him. He has no idea what to think about that.

“Oh, you've got to be kidding,” he huffs, opting for a generalized defense until his brain can decide what to think.

“Oh, I'm not kidding, Haymitch,” Beetee replies without a pause, this time very obviously looking Haymitch up and down with a lascivious air. It makes Haymitch feel downright weird and confused. “I don't kid about that.”

“Why didn’t you tell me who you were when you gave us that tour?” he demands, deciding for the moment to not think about the fact that another man has just implied that he’d like to have sex with him. Really, he thinks he might like to avoid that topic forever, because damn, a man in Twelve would pretty much gnaw his own leg off before he’d talk about anything to do with men having sex with men.

But Beetee doesn’t seem to let it go.

“I wanted to size you up first, honestly. Wanted to see if you were as interesting as you looked on my viewscreen.” He lowers his voice slightly, as if he’s making a confession; except that it doesn’t feel like a confession, because Latier doesn’t seem the least bit embarrassed to be admitting this: “I’ve kind of had a thing for you ever since your Games. But it occurred to me it could be just all physical.” He grins. “I needed to check out your brains in person.”

“I ...” Haymitch begins, utterly flummoxed as to where to go next, and aware that his brains are not particularly on display right now besides.

“I have a girlfr- ” He stops short. “I had a girlfriend,” he finishes, his tone chagrined. Why does he keep doing that lately?

But he sees Latier's eyes flicker with sympathy and gives thanks that maybe at least the man will now move off the subject of Haymitch's body, which Haymitch doesn't even want to think about himself.

“Yes, I've been watching your Victory Tour, of course,” he says in a gentler tone, the smugness replaced for the moment with something more neutral, careful. “Alsey seemed very sweet.”

“I loved her very much,” Haymitch says, then wonders why it felt like he had to tell Latier that. But he appreciates that the man hasn't automatically started talking about her in pitying tones, like most people do, like his prep team does, like Keppler, like Caia.

Latier just nods in return. “I'm sure you did, Haymitch,” he says, and nothing more.

Haymitch's eyes, curse them, involuntarily glance at the excessively large bed in the middle of the room, then flash away, embarrassed. He sees the victor’s glance follow his, and blurts out before he can think to stop himself: “Why did you bring me here?”

His body buzzes with a confusing mix of excitement and anxiety at the thought of what the man might answer. “I mean …” he falters after a moment, desperate to fill the awkward, empty silence.

Latier finally speaks, after another excruciating pause. “Oh, did you think I brought you here to seduce you?” He says it with an air of disbelief that is finally something Haymitch recognizes – from when men back home, close friends, accidentally stumble into this sort of territory and need a way out.

Now Latier would accuse Haymitch of misunderstanding him, with vague implications of being weird, and Haymitch would respond with a gruff denial without any heat, and then the entire awkward moment would be concluded, District Twelve style.

“Haymitch, I like to show off, but I'm not crazy,” he says instead, with a slight roll of his eyes. “We'd never get the bed back the way it was. Besides: Snow’s bed.” He wrinkles his nose. “Seriously, ew.”

What? “That's not what I meant!” he protests, feeling like the floor has just given way.

“It's totally what you meant,” Beetee smirks, his words mild, unbothered. And, he suddenly realizes, just when and how did this man become Beetee in his mind?

“But nah, if you want to me to seduce you, I've got a much more private place in mind – also bugs-free. But you've got a meeting scheduled with your prep team in about forty minutes. Not nearly enough time.” The mischief in his eyes was already back, unsettling Haymitch's already shaky grasp on clear thought. “We'll talk more about it later. Right now, we should get you back to your room before your team arrives.” Beetee pauses and looks Haymitch over again with a loaded gaze. “Not that they need to do much,” he says with a wistful air, then seems to laugh at something, possibly himself. “Come on, let's go.”

Again, Haymitch finds himself following this man he doesn't know at all through the Justice Hall and back to his room. As Haymitch fumbles in his pocket for the keycode to open the door, he feels Beetee's breath close to his ear, warm and so quiet to avoid the bugs, Haymitch has to strain to hear nonetheless.

“I brought you there because I've been ordered not to talk to you. Also, after watching your Games, I thought you'd appreciate the chance to piss a little on Snow.”

Haymitch punches the code into the keypad. The door opens in utter silence. “You are crazy,” he whispers back.

“Maybe,” he says in a low voice. “I'm betting you'll come to like it though.”

**

Capitol law states that every able-bodied, conscious citizen of sound mind living in the twelve districts of Panem has to watch the Hunger Games. But no one could exactly force you to pay attention.

This year, Haymitch isn't. Nor is Mr. Burdock, who sits at the head of the classroom, just to the side of a large viewscreen blaring the 47th Hunger Games for the entire class to see, unobstructed. His heavy, clunky metal desk, with its gun-metal gray fixtures and uncomfortable chair, are a contrast to the large, modern monstrosity blaring the Hunger Games in from the Capitol in brilliant color and stereophonic sound. Their textbooks may be more than thirty years old, and their maps, and encyclopedias are probably heavily edited, and mostly about coal and being passive little district citizens anyway. But a large, modern viewscreen just like this one exists in every classroom, so that the children throughout the district are assured to have a comfortable (read: enforced) place from which to view the Games.

Haymitch, who has just recently turned fourteen, has beaten the odds three times already. At least when it comes to Reaping Day. In other areas? Well, all that luck had to even out somewhere, he supposes. He tries to ignore the dull, persistent aches all over his torso where his dad pummeled him yesterday afternoon when he tried for the umpteenth time to stop the drunken bastard from doing the same to his mom.

He's oddly grateful for the timing of the Games this year, because it means he isn't obligated to concentrate on anything in class; with the pain, he doesn't think he could.

Of course, Alsey's insistent tone, coming from the desk to the left of him and accompanied by an emphatic poke, isn't helping. “Haymitch,” she demands excitedly. “Are you seeing this?”

He glances first up at Burdock, who is engrossed in a pile of homework papers, keeping only an occasional eye on the action on the screen, and an even less occasional eye on the classroom chatter.

The rules say they have to stay three hours later in school during the Games, and they are not allowed to do anything but watch the broadcasts, so teachers take advantage of the down time to catch up on grading and correcting and other administrative tasks. Haymitch has had other teachers who were all about paying strict, unmitigated attention to the action (and one elementary school teacher who even used the tribute training scores as a math exercise), but everyone knows that Burdock lost a brother in the Games years before any of them were born, and so he lets them get away with socializing among themselves for the nine hours, as long as they keep their voices down enough that the bugs can't distinguish what they're saying, and as long as they transform into good little citizens whenever the principal stops by.

“Am I seeing what?” he grouses absently at her. “There's nothing to see.”

She smooths her hair back with one hand and sits up a little straighter. “Well this year there is,” she says.

“What could there be?” he argues, making sure to keep his voice as low as hers. “Everyone knows Swagger March couldn't bring home a tribute, even if a sponsor sent them a rocket launcher, so what's the point?”

“I'm not talking about Swagger's tributes,” she whispers back. “I'm talking about him.”

Haymitch follows her finger pointing at the screen. It's focused right now on a thin (but not starving thin) young man, probably somewhere at the end of Reaping age, wearing a uniform with a “3” emblazoned on it. His muscles look underdeveloped to non-existent, so he can't be a career; but despite his advanced age, he looks like he hasn't worked a hard day in his life.

“He doesn't look like your typical Three tribute,” he acknowledges with a mutter. District Three is known for producing strong, athletic, but not necessarily clever tributes, not like the Careers, who combine brawn with cultivated strategic minds. The Threes generally make Final Eight, sometimes even Final Four, but rarely last to the end.

“I know!” Alsey's delighted interest pushes the pitch of her voice almost too high, threatening to break the general quiet hubbub. The two of them look up reflexively at Mr. Burdock and see he has indeed noticed them, and he puts a warning finger up to his lips.

Despite his every resolve not to be interested, Alsey has pricked Haymitch’s curiosity, and he starts watching. It was inevitable anyway. He can't deny Alsey anything within his power to give for long.

The weakling in wire-rimmed glasses has managed to pry open a portion of the piping on his uniform in order to get at the thin metal wire running along inside. He leaves it hanging for later use hanging on one side of his glasses frame as he huddles over one of the tribute pedestals near the Cornucopia, which has long since been stripped of goods and abandoned.

“What the hell is he doing?” Haymitch blurts out in surprise, caught up in the danger of it, despite himself. “There are mines under there.”

“Language, Mr. Abernathy.” Burdock's sharp reproach flies across the room, but it is without teeth, and he immediately returns to his papers, and they return to watching the District Three tribute.

“He's being smart,” declares Alsey.

“He's being stupid if you ask me. He's going to get himself blown up.”

“No, he's going to use that wire he pulled out of his uniform for something with that pedestal, just you watch.”

“She's right,” murmurs Tom Saxton, sitting one seat behind Alsey in the same row. Tom is one of those boys who could think circles around his science and math teachers since he was ten, and everyone said it was a crying shame for him that he'd not been born in District Three or Five. “He's going to pull out the wiring under that pedestal and connect up something useful.”

“Okay,” Haymitch replies, not feeling any more enlightened. “Like what?”

“I don't know, but he's got an idea,” Alsey insists, like that's the best thing she's heard of in her whole life. She takes a furtive look around before she speaks again, not wanting to insult someone in the room who might be a sibling or a friend to Twelve's already-dead tributes. “It'd be nice to see someone in there winning with brains.”

“Such an intelligent win, Beetee. Just absolutely unique.”

The voice that overtakes Haymitch's senses and wakes him up from his daydream belongs to yet another Capitol journalist whose name Haymitch has momentarily forgotten in his reverie. He comes to, trying not to show his confusion, but it's unnecessary since …. since … Nevil Laurenti, he remembers in a flash of relief, has been focusing for the last several minutes on showing highlights of Beetee's victory a few years ago, which apparently he accomplished by electrocuting a large number of remaining tributes. He doesn't remember the details.

“Why thank you, Nevil.” Beetee's voice sounds smooth and in control, just like it had in Snow's opulent quarters, and listening to it, Haymitch feels a new twinge of the same awkward confusion he'd felt earlier today.

“As someone who was a engineering major at University, I always have appreciated the way you won your Games, even though most Games polls show that the majority of Panem has never understood it,” Laurenti continues. His tone is almost intimate, as if he and Beetee are part of an extended family of geniuses who know they must stick together, because no one else understands them. When Haymitch dares to look over at Beetee again, Beetee notices immediately, and locks their gazes together. As before, it is too intensely probing for comfort. Haymitch feels his stomach leap in about four different directions at once.

What the hell is going on here? Is he attracted to Beetee Latier? He can't be, can he? He's never felt an attraction to a man before. But what other explanation is there for this feeling every time Beetee looks at him, for the way his senses tend to retract into tunnel vision? He can feel his body swaying just slightly in his chair even now, at the undeniable sense of someone wanting him.

He's never felt that, not even exactly with Alsey, who he knew loved him; but it always kind of felt like she was doing something noble, loving the school outcast, the boy who got report cards with words like “sullen” on them, who the other kids in class thought was weird or snobbish. And he always felt lucky for Alsey’s kisses, and for those moments behind her parents’ house where they fumbled underneath dresses and shirts. But he never felt this kind of raw, dizzying need. The realization disturbs him.

He shakes the feeling off and tries to concentrate on Laurenti, who has apparently picked up on some sort of chemistry going on between Beetee and Haymitch, because he suddenly wants the two of them talking.

“So Haymitch, Beetee,” he says with an air of mischief. “Both of you were pretty non-traditional Games tributes in your own ways.” Oh fuck, Haymitch thinks desperately. You're not really going to talk about the force field, are you? Are you trying to get us both killed?

But Laurenti skirts the problematic topic handily by not getting at all specific, relying on everyone having known what they saw, he supposes, even if they'll probably forget all about it by next year.

“Pretty untraditional wins for both your districts, boys,” he says conversationally. “Three tends to use brawns as a strategy, while Twelve … well, no offense to your district, Haymitch, but Swagger wasn't exactly pumping out the victors, was he?”

The audience titters briefly, and Haymitch is surprised at the white-hot anger on Swagger's behalf that passes through him like lightning. How dare he humiliate a dead man like that?

“Swagger was a good man,” he nearly stutters out a defense, all the while thanking fate that these interviews aren't compulsory viewing back home and so almost no one watches. “He faced a lot of obstacles to winning.”

“He taught me a lot, actually,” Beetee chimes in with what Haymitch is sure must be a lie. He can't imagine someone like Beetee taking advice from anyone he didn't think of as an intellectual equal. But Beetee continues to elaborate: “My first year in Mentor Central last year, he showed me the ropes. He was a great help.”

Sensing the mood changing, Laurenti nods with overdone agreement. “Well, I'm sure we'll be seeing the fruits of that help soon then, Beetee,” he says. “Did you know that the average mentor brings home his or her first victor in his third Hunger Games?”

Beetee just laughs, letting the pointed remark roll right off him, even manufacturing a smug grin for the cameras. “And I’m on my fourth, right, Nevil? Well, I think that figure is probably a bit skewed by the number of winning tributes from Districts One and Two, don’t you? No pressure, though, hm?” He makes it sound like a jocular dare to Laurenti, and by extension, the Capitol viewers, to try and make him care about their opinion of him. He cocks his head towards the audience, as if to connect directly with them, but actually, his eyes are locking with Haymitch's and once again, Haymitch feels a wave of something he doesn't understand that buzzes all his nerve endings. He forces himself to stare back at the man, as if in defiance, although he's not sure what he's defying.

Beetee just smiles, his eyes full of knowing mischief.

Go to Chapter 9

Fic: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil (7/11)

millarific — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 23:42:06 GMT

Fic: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil (6/11)

millarific — Sun, 02 Mar 2014 16:31:49 GMT

Title: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil
Author: millari
Characters: Haymitch Abernathy, Mags, Beetee, Chaff, President Snow, Haymitch's Dad, Haymitch's Girl, OCs
Pairing: Haymitch/Beetee
Rating: R
Beta: the lovely trovia
Warnings: Implied references to forced prostitution, canonical character deaths
Summary: On his victory tour, Haymitch soon finds out that the real Games have only just begun, and survival means learning to spin out a web of lies, compromises and self-destruction. The Games' oldest living victor and arguably its most intelligent one show him that even in the tainted life of a Victor, there are still ways to prevail.
A/N:This is a finished multi-chaptered work that I will post about once per week.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

CHAPTER 6

When he wakes in the morning, Lucilla is gone, but there is coffee and breakfast waiting on the table in his room. She keeps her distance as much as is possible during the train ride to District Four. At first, he makes a point of being near her, not wanting to talk to her necessarily, but just wanting to be in the presence of someone else who knows. But she keeps finding little ways to excuse herself, and he wonders if she is unhappy with him, or just trying to be safe.

Then, after they arrive, something in her demeanor completely changes, and she about-faces into personally fussing over little bits of his wardrobe, adjusting his tie for him, finding ways to be close, as if maybe she's trying to find an opportunity to break the reserve the bugs everywhere require of them. He's not sure what's going on. She babbles on like nothing's happened between them, but there's this strange combination of distance and closeness that emanates from her now that's mystifying, and yet weirdly familiar, though he can't quite place it.

They're standing in the wings waiting for Haymitch to be called out onto a nighttime stage made up to look like a low-budget version of Caesar Flickerman's in the Capitol: Haymitch figures it must be because they're getting closer to Panem's central hub – maybe the districts get richer in this direction, he muses. It would make sense, given how many more resources the Career districts seem to have.

As they wait, Lucilla puts a supportive hand on his shoulder and gives him a peck on the cheek, wishing him luck, like a mother sending her child off to his first day of school. It's all he can do not to startle under this unexpected, slightly manic show of affection.

“Now don't worry,” she clucks. “I've made it clear to Caia Moulton that under no circumstances is she to ask you about Alsey or your family.”

Caia Moulton. A name Haymitch distantly recognizes, a popular journalist in the Capitol. His last district appearance must have had good ratings, he thinks with distaste. Lucilla, however, smiles with a sense of triumph: “I told her she can try it, but she'll never get near Haymitch Abernathy again all year if she does!”

The prep team appears for one last finishing application of stage makeup, impatient that the train's lateness deprived them of the chance to apply their full arts onto him. Haymitch waves away their attempts to flitter over him with an angry sweep of his hand that accidentally cuffs one of the least important of them: Preen gives a little shriek of overdone Capitol pain, and she, along with the two other members of the team, backs away with wide eyes, as if he's a wild beast.

“Yeah, I'm not caged in the arena anymore, am I?” he snarls, letting his glare roll over her, then over all three of them. Their terrified expressions make him feel like he's just beat up on kindergarteners, and it quickly eats away at his righteous anger. But he's also too tense and impatient about this interview, no matter Lucilla's promises about the content, and they seem at least somewhat deserving of his ire.

Just a bunch of Capitol idiots, anyway, he reassures himself.

“I swear the next person who tries putting mascara on me is going to lose an arm!” he yells at them. Combined with Lucilla's meaningful glance in their direction, it's enough to get them to retreat.

“That was extremely bad manners, Haymitch,” she reproaches him as soon as they're gone, and it's too much like a mother for him to take. But he doesn't want to think about his mother and Lucilla in the same breath; it's just too disturbing.

He looks around the room, considering the bugging devices that must be everywhere in here.

“Really, the team is just trying to help you look your best for the cameras,” she scolds on, oblivious to his growing discomfort. “The better impression you make on camera this year, the better job you're going to be able to do as a mentor next year. You're not being fair to ...”

“Are you all right?” he cuts her off, as bluntly as he can think to put it without risking either of their safety.

She blinks. “All right?” she repeats slowly, then says even more deliberately, “I'm fine, Haymitch.”

“I mean,” he pauses, searching for the right words, “we've been through a lot lately, haven't we?”

He sees a flash of momentary panic in her eyes, how her gaze immediately flees, as if she's embarrassed or afraid. Is she thinking of the bugs too?

“Oh, you know,” she chirps in her bright, singsong Capitol accent that has never stopped sounding strange to his ears. “The Victory Tour is quite the grueling schedule. So many people to meet in such a short amount of time. So many strong emotions involved. But not to worry.”

At first, he thinks this is talking in code, or a prelude to an invitation to go later somewhere safe from listening ears for a moment. But she doesn't give him any further signal; her only movement is a frantic, restless tapping of her pencil on her clipboard. Her gaze makes a studied attempt to keep out of his line of sight.

“I'll be fine once we get home to the Capitol,” she murmurs as they hear his name announced, and there is a surprisingly decent amount of applause out there. Without ever meeting his eyes, she gets up and gently nudges him forward. “Now get out there, and don't let that woman bully you, all right? Don't talk about anything you don't want to.” Her voice is firm and final.

A miserable, “Okay,” is all he can manage as he lets her push him out into the garish colored lights of the stage.

**

District Four is a Career district, where volunteers regularly emerge, so Haymitch is not surprised by now to see the blank, stoic hostility on the faces of the audience: they're used to winning, thanks to the training that no one talks about, and this year, he's gotten in the way of that. Of course, no one saw it coming that the boy from the little backwater district would take the Games.

When he walks out on stage, a couple of minutes before the broadcast is to start, he's grateful to see that there's another victor out there, one who can maybe deflect some of the attention off him. His attitude changes, however, when he sees which victor it is.

Right, Mags,, he remembers as he sits down in the chair opposite her. Oldest living victor. Great. He's been in enough of these interviews by now to know that the older the victor sitting across from him, the more the cameras tend to focus in on him and his youth. He won't get a break all night.

She looks even tinier and older than on television. She's in one of those Capitol chairs that aren't meant much for sitting up straight; yet she is sitting as straight as can be, legs not even trying to pretend they could reach the floor but instead crisscrossed in the seat in a way that Haymitch realizes he recognizes from previous years. Her long sleeveless green dress is narrowly tapered with a large floral print. With her knees sticking out underneath the fabric like that, she looks comfortable, almost defiantly casual. Actually, what she looks like to Haymitch is a praying mantis perched on a leaf, like she could wait forever in patient stillness.

They're more organized here, he thinks, looking around on the dais. It's painted an enthusiastic seaweed green and the Capitol chairs are upholstered in sky blue. The lighting and cameras don't look tacked on and jarring here like they do every year in Twelve when the Victory Tour brings them. Examining the photos they've put up of the four tributes from this year, he wonders how the district even managed to produce them. The only photos Haymitch has ever seen before the Games took him to the Capitol had been a few very old ones that his mother had of her great-great-grandfather and her
great-grandmother.

They must have a lot more money here. All those victors and their winnings, he supposes. Are they sharing their money with the district? Or does the Capitol favor them that much that it gives them all these luxuries? There's a palpable unity here, and a thoughtfulness about the Games, unlike at home, where no one talks about the Reapings until the day they happen, and even then, in hushed and resigned tones.

The event begins as they all do, with his little speech of thanks to the District written for him by Lucilla. He turns to Mags to acknowledge her, as he is supposed to do. The whole thing is meant to be acknowledgement that the Games had all been about nothing but graceful sportsmanship. Yet, as Mags sits through Haymitch's words in unreadable silence, he thinks of Chaff in District Eleven and his anger. He thinks she must be seeing nothing but the boy who made her bring home four coffins this year instead of just two.

“Look at that,” Caia Moulton gushes as she guides them all through his highlights tape, then focuses on one moment with the kind of breathless oblivion Haymitch has by now come to expect from anyone associated with the Capitol. “Here's my absolute favorite part of the whole Games.”

The footage zooms in on Haymitch's feet as he steps around the gravely wounded District 1 tribute he's just left on the ground and goes in for a vicious but ill-timed underhand knife blow to the Four tribute's abdomen, the most dangerous remaining member of the Career pack. The strike misses, and Haymitch has to quickly dodge a riposte from a spear. Haymitch can detect the moment when he figures out how to pull back and wait. The two of them begin a dance of attacks and near misses, Haymitch letting the Four tribute make blow after blow, letting him tire. What startles Haymitch most to watch on this tape now is the distinct lack of any expression at all on his own face as he wards off the blows for several minutes, letting the older boy's visible frustration soon build up into rage. His shoulders stiffen as he realizes that there’s something about this that is all too familiar.

He stays glued to the screen, recognizing all the sensations hiding behind that empty expression on his face – the fear, the adrenaline, the fury, and the urge to run – all of it rolled up tight like a monstrous creature masked behind a cocoon, waiting for liberation. He wonders why he's never noticed this before, since he's watched footage of his Games before in all the previous districts:

Turns out he's been training for the Games all his life. Thanks, Dad, he thinks, repressing a bitter grimace.

“Now at first when I was watching this live,” Caia interjects into the silence of the two tributes endlessly circling each other. “I must admit I thought it was going to be completely dull. I mean, you want to see some action on the field, you know? And you two were so careful. But the tension you both built up there! I kept feeling more and more suspense as the minutes wore on!” she exclaims, as if Haymitch and the Four tribute had planned their life and death struggle for her entertainment. The viewscreen freezes on a shot of Haymitch in profile, standing over the dead Four tribute in just the moment before the third Career is about to attack him. He doesn't even look worried.

“Such an amazing show of calm, in the face of three Careers, no less,” Caia breathes, apparently clueless that perhaps the families and friends of the dead tribute in the audience might not want to dwell on this particular moment of the Games. “Given their superior fighting skills, how do you think you managed to defeat them?”

When he'd woken up in that hospital in the Training Center, Haymitch hadn't been able to feel anything. Everyone around him had been full of hyperreal emotion – excitement mostly - but he had felt nothing, just completely flat, and he had stayed that way for days afterward. During his interview with Caesar Flickerman, necessity had forced him to turn back on the persona that he and Lucilla had created together for the Games, and he had told himself that he would figure out the emptiness later. But he had watched this exact footage of himself back then with no memory, no recognition of himself as that killer with the dead expression. He hadn't wanted to look at it, although he'd certainly pretended to enjoy it for Flickerman.

With great effort, he makes himself turn that persona back on again now, and gives them a nonchalant shrug for the cameras. “I guess I just had nothing left to lose,” he says. Which he instantly realizes is a stupid thing to say. That was true for all the tributes in the arena, wasn't it? And it wasn't even true: There'd been his Ma and Jackson to lose, and Alsey. And Snow has already found other things to hold over him, hasn't he? There's Alsey 's family. Even random people of District 12 he doesn't know. A disturbing vision of his future rolls out before him, where he will be at Snow's every beck and call for the rest of his life, constantly worrying about someone else dying because of him.

“Well, now, I wouldn't exactly say that,” Caia tsks at him with one pronounced finger crooked in the air. “There was Alsey to come back to, wasn't there?”

He tries not to show how his whole body has clenched at the sound of that name coming out of the woman's mouth. Not again, he crumples inside. Lucilla promised.

But he knows this isn't Lucilla's doing. He imagines her now backstage, stamping one red high-heeled foot on the floor in outrage. She can do nothing from there though. He sees now how this is Caia's only chance to ask this question when anyone watching will care, and if she handles this right, this interview will be replayed for weeks to come and then hauled out again next year, when he returns to the Capitol as a mentor. It won't matter if Lucilla bans Caia for the rest of the year, because by then, she'll have moved on anyway.

“How are you holding up, Haymitch?” Caia smiles, her expression laced with sympathy as garish as her makeup. Another stock photo of Alsey, from that same interview she gave during the Games, melts onto the viewscreen. They snuck it past Lucilla, he realizes, as a brief wave of nausea threatens to overtake him. He gapes at Caia, mind racing. How do you think I'm holding up? he wants to say, blocking his ability to think of something useful to say. Have you ever had anyone you love taken away from you? Have you ever lost anything in your whole life?

But of course he can't say any of that.

“All of Panem has been concerned about you ever since this heartbreaking revelation about Alsey's death,” Caia prods with fake gentleness. “How are you handling this tragedy?”

He's got to say something. He won't be able to get away with begging off like he did in District Five. Fuck.

“Now, Caia,” a honeyed voice, underlined with unmistakable steel, interrupts. It takes Haymitch a moment to realize that Mags is speaking. “I know that this is young Abernathy's victory tour and I'm just old Mags who's been around forever, but you are in my district, and I'm beginning to feel a little offended that you haven't yet asked me a single question.”

He stares at her with eyes narrowed in confusion. He killed one of her tributes. Why is she defending him? Slowly he looks over at Caia, whose face has taken on a guarded, rubbery smile of discomfort.

“If all of Panem is concerned about him, then I should think that all of Panem would not want to force the boy to relive such a terrible loss just for its prurient interests,” Mags eyes Caia meaningfully, “nor your ratings.”

The spotlight shifts immediately away from him and onto her, and there are murmurs of muted, anonymous support emanating from the District Four audience. The power she must have to dare say such things in front of the cameras. How has he never noticed this power all these years of seeing her at the Games?

Caia Moulton pounces to quell a budding mutiny. “I assure you, this isn't about what I want, Mags,” she retorts, her slick as oil tone shifting and sharpening to a steel point. “In the time between now and Haymitch's last appearance in District Five, the Gamemakers have received over ten thousand pieces of mail asking how Haymitch is doing and what happened to poor Alsey.”

Ten thousand? That many people have been paying attention to him? It's a concept he finds inconceivable.It's a number he finds inconceivable.That's more than all the people in Twelve.

“What did happen to poor Alsey?” Mags folds her hand into a deliberate steeple, waiting. Haymitch sees Caia just barely manage to suppress a smile of satisfaction.

“Our sources say that Alsey died of a fever,” she announces and waits a moment, as if listening to the gasps of dismay all over the Capitol.

A fever? He's supposed to say that Alsey died of a fever? He doesn't know whether he's angry at the lie or relieved at being fed a response.

“Caia,” Mags continues her reproach. “I have seen too many of your interviews through the years to know that you have never been one to bend to popular will.”

It's a compliment, but even through his haze, Haymitch can hear the whipcords lashing out underneath, warning Caia to acquiesce. One thing's for sure, Mags is fooling almost no one into thinking that this interaction is what she says it is – the sour grapes of a jealous former victor. Perhaps the audience in the Capitol will be fooled, but he doubts anyone else will. He wonders if Mags will receive her own presidential visit soon, or worse, the thought seizes him, if one of her many children or grandchildren he's seen her talking to before the event started will be used as punishment for this act of kindness.

“I miss her every day, Caia,” he blurts out, grasping at anything he can say to get attention off Mags. “She was taken from me so unfairly,” he dares to add, wondering if Alsey's parents are watching. He's not sure whether talking about her like this, acknowledging even in a covert way that she was killed is something horrific for them to watch, or if it feels like a small justice he owes them for getting her killed. “What force in the universe would take her from me like that? After I'd just beaten the odds?”

To his relief, Caia's smile relaxes and she turns back to him. “A cruel force, Haymitch,” she confirms. He takes a petty satisfaction that she has no idea that she's just helped him come out publicly against Snow.

But she does seem to have wisely read the room and taken her victory where she can get it, switching back to questioning Mags about her mentoring this year. Mags takes one last probing look over at Haymitch before settling into a standard discussion about where her tributes shone and where, ultimately, they went wrong. She is still seated cross-legged in her chair, eyes fixed calmly on the video of Haymitch dealing the deathblow to her tribute as she remarks evenly, without rancor, but also without enthusiasm, “I had two strong candidates this year. They tried very hard to live.”

If Haymitch weren't ready to bolt up out of his chair, he'd be curious how she does it, how she manages to watch people she's responsible for, dying like that, and not go out of her mind. But he wants nothing more than to be out of there. The minute the lights on the cameras go out, he's forcing himself to thank Caia, even though he would really rather strangle her, and to stay long enough to shake Mags' hand.

“You shouldn't have jumped in like that.” For the benefit of the microphones he's sure are still turned on for the recap and gossip shows, he makes it sound like he's chiding her, but really he's hoping his tone is sharp enough to warn her that she is in danger.

“I didn't become a victor by just standing by and watching things happen, young man.” She smiles at him, still hanging onto his proffered hand. “That's just not the stuff we're made of. You'll see that soon enough.”

He looks back at her, puzzled. Has she understood? He couldn't live with himself if one of her family members could be saved from Snow's clutches and wasn't because he hadn't warned her in time. Maybe if she goes to Snow, apologizes, sucks up to him some …

But the harmless chuckle under her breath could mean anything. “We'll be seeing a lot more of each other soon,” she continues. “And who knows? You might even need a favor from me six months from now. Don't you think we'd be best off being nice to each other?”

She pats his hand then withdraws her own. “We'll talk more at the banquet.”

She doesn't get it, he realizes with dismay. But before he can try again, Caia is glad-handing her, and then Mags is enveloped by a gaggle of friends and family members of widely varying ages, children, young women, middle-aged men descending upon the stage, all of them with bronze, thick hair and skin brown from exposure to the sun. He watches her figure receding into that thicket of affection and respect, and turns away, a sudden, unexpected jealousy rising like bile in the back of his throat.

**

The Victory Banquet takes place the next day not at the Justice Hall, as usual, but in Mags' home, which apart from President's Snow's mansion and the accommodations at the Training Center, is the largest living space Haymitch thinks he's ever seen.

He sits at the far end of a large banquet table laden equally with food and with people. His eyes settle uncomfortably on the large, brown, ceramic pot in front of him, filled to bursting with foods he has never before seen in his life, not even in books. He can only assume they must be District 4 delicacies from the sea – creatures with hard, inedible shells, with curved bodies and legs that are so tiny in comparison to their bodies, Haymitch can't imagine how they could ever walk on land. His eyes sweep along the wealth of food along the table, marveling at how it's like looking at the Cornucopia, if it were only filled with food instead of weapons and survival gear. There is a large platter piled high with corn on the cobs; whole fishes that are monstrous in size compared to what people manage to sneak out of the lake beyond the fence back home; a strange, dark-green vegetable that looks vaguely like spinach, but the size of the leaves are all wrong, and the plant seems to have no stalks whatsoever; a mound of rice in a large, colorfully painted clay pot – it just goes on and on, putting all the victory banquets in the
other districts so far to shame. He's pretty sure that he's not seen this much food in one place since he left the Capitol.

He was seated originally at the center of the table, as the honored guest and ostensible focus of the event; but Haymitch quickly has learned that this couldn't be further from the truth. Mags is the real star here, and he's grateful for that, for as people have risen after dinner to talk with her, it's allowed him to quietly inch his body along the bench until he has reached the end, out of sight, where he just feels more comfortable. Even the journalists pay more attention to Mags. She had seemed so tiny and alone in that big chair onstage during the interview with Caia, but here, she holds court like the kings and queens of old in one of his mother's heirloom books from before the Dark Days. It seems that almost everyone here is a beloved friend or relative who kisses Mags on the cheek in greeting and spends several minutes discussing things with her, their hands darting all over the place with gestures and their faces animated with sincere affection. He finds it both utterly compelling and a little overwhelming to watch – this outpouring of emotion. She even overshadows the District 4 mayor – a tall, muscular, suntanned woman in her fifties who looks like she'd be more at home on a fishing boat than officiating an event like this. The woman seems perfectly happy to play with one of Mags' many grandchildren and to let Mags run the show, as if it just makes good sense.

Lucilla, who is still at the center of the table on the opposite side, is expertly cracking the shell of one of the larger boiled sea animals that had been brought to her at her request. (The waiter had offered Haymitch one as well, but it had looked too much like an enormous water bug, complete with antennae and beady, black eyes, and Haymitch had declined the offer in disgust he hoped he hid well enough.) Despite there being about ten to fifteen people at this table, Haymitch notices that the District Four dignitaries have given her a wide berth. Bored despite his desire to hide away from everything, he walks over and sits down next to her, intending to stay only a moment.

“How can you eat that thing?” he murmurs as she rips open a claw and coaxes out a piece of rubbery, pink-red meat.

“This 'thing' is called a lobster, I'll have you know,” she retorts primly, “and it costs real money in the Capitol. I'm taking advantage to have some while I'm here.”

Haymitch realizes that he has never thought of Lucilla as someone who had to think about money. Come to think of it, he's always assumed in the back of his mind that Capitol citizens don't have to worry about money at all – food just magically appears on their plates without effort, like at the Training Center.

“Not to mention, every man, woman and child knows how to prepare lobster here,” she adds. “It's in their blood, I suppose.”

“Oh, like coal mining is in my blood, right?” he rolls his eyes at her, then remembers that he should watch his tongue near the journalist pack, near the invisible cameras that are probably somewhere filming this. But the reminder of his district shames him, as it occurs to him that already, he's been exposed to the Capitol lifestyle too much: Anyone from back home sitting here in his place would have eaten everything off their plate – monstrous water bug and all – without question. The way Lucilla is dipping the creature's meat in calorie-rich butter alone would make choking the stuff down worth it.

Feeling penitent, he asks to try it, but it's disturbingly chewy, yet a bit slimy too, like it's trying to be meat, but soft in all the wrong places. He swears he can still taste the salt from the ocean on it as he swallows it with a barely suppressed shudder. The combination of flavors just seems all wrong to him.

“Are you going to go see the beach?” a small voice pipes up at Haymitch's side. “People who come to visit us always want to see the beach.”

Haymitch looks down to see a small boy with dark, curious eyes and an innocent grin that reminds him terribly of Jackson, despite the boy's bronze head of hair. The power of speech robbed from him by the comparison, Haymitch just manages to shrug.

The child, who must be one of Mags' endless grandsons or grand nephews, barely hesitates before pleading, “Can I come with you? I'm not allowed to go by myself, but you're older. You could take me. You'd love it there. The ground there is like nothing you’ve ever seen, and the water has waves, big ones. And I could show you where it is, so I could go with you. We could go after dinner …”

Jackson used to do this when he wanted to convince Haymitch to do something, he remembers heavily. He would pile up short sentences like that, rapid and out of sequence, all of his words coming out in whatever order he thought of them, like they were meant to convince Haymitch by their sheer number rather than by any reasoning power.

“Kid, I don't know,” he hedges. He's bored here, but he's not really in the mood to go anywhere else. Being alone in his room is what he'd rather be doing, if he weren't obligated to put in the appearance here. And the last thing he wants to do is to babysit some boy who is just going to remind him of his dead little brother the whole time. “Maybe you should ask your Gran.”

For a moment, the boy looks discouraged, but then brightens. “I'll tell her you want to go!” he exclaims, delighted with his new plan, ignoring how Haymitch groans at the idea. Great, he thinks, watching the kid bound over to Mags, waiting respectfully until she finishes speaking with another adult, then tugging at the sleeve of her blouse. Mags listens to him, then looks up and across the room at Haymitch, who just shrugs helplessly as she rises and walks over.

“So Carlos says you want a tour of the beach after the banquet?”

Haymitch cocks his head. “Well, it's kind of more what he wants ...”

“It's not a bad idea,” she announces. “Should have thought of it myself. I'll bet you've never seen the ocean, have you?”

“I'll see it some other time. I'm sure I'll have some reason to come back here one day.”

“Nonsense. After all this rich food, I am going to need a walk.”

He is about to protest again, when Mags calls out to Carlos, “Niño!”

The boy comes running. “Sí, abuelita?” he asks hopefully. She gives him a reproving scowl, but even Haymitch can tell that it's fake, can hear the love for him leaking out the sides of her tone.

“Your little trick worked,” she informs him. “We'll go see the beach. You can bring a couple others if you want. But be ready in a half hour.”

“Yesss! the boy nearly hisses in satisfaction and runs off, issuing a perfunctory shout of, “Gracias, abuelita!” over his shoulder. Mags smiles, despite herself.

Haymitch can see there's no way out of it, but that doesn't mean he won't still try: “The ocean's just a bigger pond, isn't it?” he sighs. “I've seen a pond before.”

She raises her eyebrows in challenge. “And a tiger is just a bigger housecat?”

His reply is lazy yet argumentative: “I've never seen a tiger.”

“And be very thankful for that, hijo,” she says, suddenly sounding tired, or maybe sad, but it's gone in a flicker of a moment. “All right then. We shall leave in thirty minutes.” She points at the spread on the table. “Try the oysters,” she suggests, enjoying Haymitch's grimace at the sight of the things when she points them out. “They're just as awful as they look.”

Go to Chapter 7

Fic: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil (5/11)

millarific — Sun, 02 Mar 2014 14:17:26 GMT

Title: Planting Seeds in vanquished Soil
Author: millari
Characters: Haymitch Abernathy, Mags, Beetee, Chaff, President Snow, Haymitch's Dad, Haymitch's Girl, OCs
Pairing: Haymitch/Beetee
Rating: R
Beta: The most encouraging trovia
Warnings: Implied references to forced prostitution, canonical character deaths
Summary: On his victory tour, Haymitch soon finds out that the real Games have only just begun, and survival means learning to spin out a web of lies, compromises and self-destruction. The Games' oldest living victor and arguably its most intelligent one show him that even in the tainted life of a Victor, there are still ways to prevail.
A/N: This is a finished multi-chaptered work that I will post about once per week.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4

CHAPTER 5:

During the train ride to District Ten, he attempts a mental tally of the people he personally killed in combat and which district they came from, trying to get an idea of what kind of hell to expect on the rest of this trip. The deaths are all too memorable, but the names and districts are not. This disturbs him, makes him feel too Capitol.

But it also makes him think of Lucilla, and then an idea.

He asks her if she has a list of the tributes for whose deaths he was credited. He knows she would also have actual footage of the kills, but he doesn't need more fodder for his mind to play with. She complies, making pleased noises about him showing some enthusiasm for once. The carefully-typewritten list fastidiously tells him the name of each tribute he killed, the district, and gruesomely, the weapon used to kill them, as well as their manner of death: Seamus Walsh, District Four, hunting knife, exsanguination. Orlando Miller, District Eleven, rock, cranial trauma..

It's an overnight train ride. Despite the smooth, silent journey, he sleeps fitfully. His attempts at reckoning have brought back the nightmares with a vengeance, and he wakes repeatedly with choked-off gasps, from images he finally remembers of all the other tributes he killed or saw killed in the arena. He first wakes up from a nightmare of the arrow tearing through the neck of the girl from District Eight, whose name he finally remembers in a flash was Marina. He wakes up a second time, clutching his familiar knife under his pillow, to the fading image of yanking a different knife out of Seamus Walsh, a knife that now sits in the Games Museum in the Capitol.

More than once, he considers getting up and going to the dining car where he knows the sideboard will be stocked with more liquors than he can name, but after one of the dreams features his father attacking his mother with a knife Haymitch recognizes as the one he used in the arena, he is more resolute than ever not to succumb.

But after the third nightmare in a row, he refuses to go back to sleep, and just lies there in the darkness with a residual feeling of terror at nothing in particular, feeling his heartbeat, loud and pounding in his ears. It competes with the hum of the high-speed train gliding along its tracks, and he wonders how the hell he's going to make through ten more of these things.

With each city, he stays quieter and quieter, giving as little as he can, saying next to nothing if he's in a District where he's killed a tribute. As they get through each round of interviews in each district – Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, he notices the journalists getting younger or sometimes older, but in each case, quite obviously less prestigious, to the point where Lucilla corners him in his room in the District Six Justice Hall after his interview, wagging her gold-painted fingernails at him in frustration.

“I don't know what you think you're accomplishing with this gloom and doom act,” she complains. “I actually got a call about you this evening from the focus groups team!”

“Oh?” Haymitch barely raises one eyebrow, to show how little he could care about what the Capitol citizenry has to say on the matter. His mood isn't being helped by all the nightmares he keeps having.

“Yes, I did!” Lucilla insists on her angry righteousness. “They are concerned that you're not being outgoing enough. The focus groups are saying you don’t engage enough with the journalists, that you frown too much. People in the Capitol are actually tuning out; that almost never happens with the Victory Tour specials. They are practically guaranteed ratings killers!”

When he merely scowls at her, she adjusts her purple wig obsessively, even though every inch of her is a perfectly groomed portrait of Capitol fashion. “Whatever happened to the cocky young man I saw with Caesar Flickerman?” she tries in despair. “He at least had a roguish charm.”

“I guess he grew up and killed some children,” he growls at her.

“It's a game!” she retorts. “That's how the game works! And look at you! Repaid for your great risk and clever cunning with unending glory in the annals of the Capitol, and money to last a lifetime! Surely you see how much better off your life is since the Hunger Games.”

Haymitch is surprised into a good long stare of disbelief. “You don't think of us as real people at all, do you?” he shouts.

It surprises him even more when she is left bereft by his unfiltered remark. “How dare you say such a thing to me, Haymitch Abernathy? Of course you're real people, with lives and stories and families back home! You think we forget that? Why do you think we make a point of interviewing each tribute with Caesar before the Games? Why have an escort to do your publicity? It's so no matter what happens in the arena, the stories of all you brave young men and women, who sacrifice their lives for the good of Panem, will not be lost.”

With those self-righteous and hideously clueless words ringing in his ears, Haymitch turns and punches a hole in the wall beside them, no mean feat considering the building is over eight hundred years old and made of plaster. She visibly flinches, in a terribly familiar way, and for a moment, his heart races in a familiar way too, like he's back home in Twelve, trapped in one of those moments where he can see his dad about to explode with anger and there's nothing he can do to stop it.

His fists open, and he self-consciously puts his hands back down at his sides, making sure she sees it, even as he feels his heart pounding like crazy.

“I'll see you in the morning, Lucilla,” he mutters, but he can't look her in the eye anymore.

She takes the hint and leaves. “Early day tomorrow,” she says, her voice shaken and muted as she reaches the door. “Breakfast at 7 a.m. Be on time, for once.”

He nods as he hears her leave, and finds his eyes focusing on the sideboard in his room which contains an assortment of expensive bottles of liquor. He strides over as soon as she's gone and picks up one of the heavier bottles, considering the label a moment – Capitol Cognac - before he smashes it with a furious satisfaction against the wall. He grabs another bottle and another and smashes them all, letting the rage overtake him, enjoying the sound of smashing glass and the sight of the brown and amber liquids streaming wastefully down the wall. The stains on the antique floral wallpaper run in chaotic lines that he knows will never scrub away, and he finds that utterly pleasing, until an Avox shows up out of nowhere at the sound of breaking glass, his expression frantic as he flees to the adjoining bathroom and emerges with a towel to mop up the mess. Haymitch can hear the Avox's shoes crunching atop the shards of broken glass as he starts his work.

“No, no!” he exclaims, horrified at the submissive terror his actions have inspired in this man who is easily twice his age. “Please don't do that. I'll take care of it. It's my mess, I'll clean it up.”

The Avox's eyes widen with … surprise? Fear? Confusion? Then he waves at Haymitch with the towel and shakes his head before returning to his task.

“Leave it, I said!” he roars, and instantly regrets it as the Avox literally jumps backward a step, and turns quickly around, as if getting a predator in his sights. Haymitch feels shame wash over him as he wonders what the Avox did to be punished like this. Did he try to run away from his district? Did he just fuck something important up, or is he what Snow meant when he talked about the seeds of rebellion? Did this guy stand up to the Capitol, not symbolically like Haymitch, but in a real way?

Raising his hands up at the man in a placating gesture, Haymitch struggles to make his voice even, soft, generous and unthreatening. Basically the opposite of everything about Randall Abernathy's voice. “I 'm sorry,” he breathes. “I shouldn't have. You'll get in trouble if I make you leave it, won't you?”

The Avox nods with a worried expression, then quickly looks back at the stained wall, now that Haymitch has made it clear he's not a threat.

“Can I at least help you?” he asks.

The Avox shakes his head emphatically, and waves at Haymitch again, clearly dismissing him. For a moment, Haymitch considers getting the hell out of there, running away from the shame of it, but then he frowns, falling onto the bed with a loud thump, making himself watch the Avox work.

He lets the sound of crunching glass fill his ears and inhales deeply the aroma of spilt alcohol hanging in the air, punishing himself with it.

The Avox will probably never appreciate his intentions, but Haymitch does it anyway; he figures it's the least he can do.

**

District Five has no current living victor, and at first, Haymitch thinks that he will at least get some relief from having to stare across the stage at someone who resents him for surviving. And at least in this district, he didn't kill anyone.

But as it turns out, the media onslaught is actually worse to face alone, with no one else to relieve him even for a minute from entertaining the Capitol. At least in the other districts, the journalists assigned to his interviews had started figuring out what Haymitch was going to be like, and had planned accordingly: They had taken to asking him a few standard questions, showing a few of his impressive moments on screen – the force field moment excluded, of course – then quickly moving on to a program that's been adjusted to be less of the “tell us what was it like” variety and more about analysis of this year's games, an approach where any previous victor in attendance can easily find threads to pick up and discuss, leaving Haymitch to sit scowling in his chair.

But this is not the case in District Five, where the spotlight is all Haymitch's.

Marcus Keppeler, a famous but middle-aged has-been talk show host in the Capitol, has been brought in to deal with him today, and it's clear that Haymitch's reputation has preceded him and Keppeler is not pleased. Before the cameras start rolling, Keppeler glares at his prey from the tall-backed leather chair that looks out of place in the poverty of this district, even in front of the grand Justice Hall. His only words to Haymitch before they go live come out terse and impatient: “By the way, President Snow is watching tonight.”

Haymitch swears his heart stops. Can Keppeler really know what is at stake here? Would Snow tell the man something like that?

No, it can't be. Keppler just knows the importance of performing well when the President is watching; that's all, right?

Yet the threat cows him enough that he actually does try to make an effort. But he's so rattled now, the interview is just a slow disaster. He tries to banter, but his timing is off. Despite the words he wielded like a weapon before the cameras came on, Keppeler clearly wasn't expecting any big change out of Haymitch, and so he misses at first that Haymitch is making jokes and then tries to cover the awkwardness that ensues with improvised changes of subject that get them nowhere conversationally. Finally, in desperation, the host tries one last area he clearly hopes will be harmless and garner some audience interest.

“So Haymitch,” he begins. “You must be getting a lot of attention from the ladies in your district now that you're a celebrity.”

Haymitch squints at him in surprise at this tack, but Keppler sends him a look implicitly telling him to roll with it. “You may not know this, but we ran a poll especially for this program where we asked fans to name their favorite tribute from the last ten years, alive or dead. You came in number three on that list, did you know that?”

Haymitch shakes his head, knowing he should pull out his cocky persona from the Games, but he's having trouble producing it. The question is so ridiculous and he doesn't understand where it is going.

“Is your escort forwarding you all the fan mail you're getting in the Capitol?” Keppeler asks. “From what we hear, you've got plenty of admirers of both genders, including President Snow's daughter.”

The audience oohs and aahs at that revelation with just a touch of scandalized appreciation, but Haymitch is distracted, the reference to both genders reminding him of Flax and Melio in Eleven. A memory of Melio's fingers crawling affectionately across Flax's shoulders, in a way that his father never would have done with his mother makes Haymitch tense up almost impercetibly, and blinds him temporarily to the larger-than-life image being flashed onto the screen behind Keppeler.

It's Alsey. She's smiling. She babbling excitedly about him on the television. For a bewildering millisecond, Haymitch's brain thinks this means that she is alive, and he gapes at the garish, deafening, fifty-foot sight of her. What the fuck is going on?

The soft strings playing underneath her words are the cue that finally let him understand what this is. Of course. He's never seen this footage, but it must have been filmed during Training Week, when they make profiles of all the tributes, the Capitol's way of generating interest in more tributes than just the Careers. Otherwise, no one would sponsor any tributes except the Ones, Twos and Fours, and Capitol forbid that the Games ever become boring.

“Now what does your pretty Miss Alsey think of all this attention you're getting?” Keppeler leans in with a confidential smile. “You can tell us: is she jealous?”

Haymitch is suddenly sure that all his nerve endings are on fire. Is this question a coincidence, or did Snow put Keppeler up to it? How the fuck is he going to answer? He suddenly thinks of Alsey's parents watching, and the idea of having to lie about her in public leaves him gutted and speechless.

The dead air prompts Keppeler to turn to the audience with that same confidential smile, as if Haymitch isn't there. “Ah, I see,” he says with an insinuating air. “He doesn't want to get into trouble with his best girl, methinks.” He turns back to Haymitch with a pleased light in his eye, thrilled to have found a topic with some traction.

“Well, come now, Clever Haymitch,” he banters. “That was your nickname in the Games, wasn't it?”

After a moment, the audience's murmurs of approval confirm this fact and he gives them a broad smile and a wink before turning back to his prey. “You were clever enough to win the Games six months ago; surely you can talk your way out of this one.”

The audience laughs, and Keppeler eats it up. For the first time in ages, he's got the audience in the palm of his hand, and he's unwilling to let go.

Haymitch stares straight ahead, unseeing, eyes filled with the image of President Snow in his mansion, watching a viewscreen. “She isn't with me anymore,” he says in a monotone. He can't look at Keppeler's face; he can't, or he knows he'll lose it.

The audience groans in sympathy. They can tell from Haymitch's stiff demeanor that this parting was against his will. Keppeler joins in with them melodramatically. “Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that,” he says.

“Are you up to telling us what happened?”

Haymitch still can't meet anyone's eye. What the fuck is he supposed to say? Is Snow going to punish him for this? Fuck.

He can hear his own voice cracking with emotion, and he hates everyone and everything in the world right now.

“She, um … she ... died.” His hands are shaking on his lap. Shit, shit, shit. Why did he just say that? Snow told him to keep it quiet. What has he just gone and done?

Another gasp from the audience. “Uh … it was a few months ago,” he adds, dropping the pitch of his words in a drastic way that he hopes communicates to Keppeler to please stop this line of questioning. But Keppeler senses ratings gold, and goes in for the kill.

“Oh, Haymitch,” he says in his best sympathetic voice. “That is a tragedy. Alsey seemed like such a nice girl when we interviewed her. She got very high ratings with our audiences. If it's any comfort, it was obvious to everyone how much she loved you, and how much you loved her.”

Of course it's not any fucking comfort at all. But it's not like he can say that. “Could we please stop talking about this, Marcus?” he begs instead, hating being on display like this, terrified of the question that will surely come next, knowing he will have to manufacture a convincing lie or else endanger more lives. “It's a very emotional topic for me,” he tries.

Marcus reaches in and pats Haymitch on the arm. “Of course it is. But you can see how this is shocking news to all of us who followed your story. There are going to be some very heartbroken viewers in the Capitol tonight, I can assure you of that.” He pauses. “Do you think you could just explain to us briefly how Alsey died? Everyone, I'm sure, wants to know.”

Haymitch covers his eyes with his palms to hide the sudden fury. Snow already has taken his family, taken Alsey, and now he's probably already sitting in his office watching, plotting how to punish Haymitch for what he just said. The last thing Haymitch needs is to provoke him more. But Haymitch won't let Snow take the truth too, at least not like this. He can't make up some stupid lie about what happened to her. He just can't.

He hunches in the fancy chair for what must be a full minute, wondering how to get out of this, while everyone around him sits waiting in polite, rapt silence. Even the District Five audience has been shocked out of its passive resentment and is hanging on tenterhooks to find out what's coming.

“Please don't ask me to talk about it, Marcus,” he repeats lamely. “I can't. I just can't.” He tries to pretend to be on the verge of tears, but actually right now, he wants to punch something, wants to take a hammer to Marcus Keppeler's ridiculous hair-sprayed green wig, preferably with Keppeler still underneath it.

“All right, all right, Haymitch.” Keppeler finally has no choice to back off or look cruel. “I understand. It's obvious this is quite painful for you.”

Haymitch can tell that he's secretly annoyed, but he couldn't give a fuck right now. He's just glad Keppeler is ending this nightmare and that in a minute, he can go hide out in his room in the Justice Hall and pray he won't come home to a dead father or a punished district. Despite his words to Snow, he knows the instant he thinks about it that he can't live with any more deaths on his hands. There are a few perfunctory words to wrap up the interview and then Keppeler addresses the camera, urging them to tune in two nights from now, when Haymitch will be in District Four.

The second the red light on the cameras go out, Haymitch is up and leaving the dais without permission, Lucilla's protests from across the stage buzzing like mosquitoes in his ears.

**

He gets to his room first, but within minutes, Lucilla is banging on his door, half-ordering, half-begging him to let her in.

“Go the fuck away!” he yells at the door, but she's surprisingly persistent, and there's something immediate in her voice that despite his better judgment, makes him get up from the luxurious bed littered with useless and uncomfortable throw pillows.

When he opens the door, she's got ugly streaks of mascara running down her cheeks. She's been obviously crying hard, and for a moment he's confused. “What do you want, Lucilla?”

To his surprise, she just hugs him as tight as she can, all her lace and taffeta and buttons pressing into him. “I'm so sorry, Haymitch. I'm sorry about Alsey. I had no idea ... I'm sorry I never got to meet her.”

“Then she means nothing to you,” he snaps at her, not wanting the job of processing her grief for her. “She's just another one of your damn stories in the annals of the Capitol.” He knows he's being cruel, but he's both too exhausted and too angry right now to care. He's also calculating enough to know that this is the precise level of harshness that will cut her deeply, and will probably make her go away.

Except that she doesn't. She grabs his elbow without a word and shuts the door behind her with a high-heeled foot. At first, he thinks she's going to pull him to the table and chair to talk, but instead, she guides him into the luxurious bathroom, turns the sink water tap on full blast, then brings him back into a tight embrace.

“When I arrived in District Twelve for this tour, you told me Alsey didn't want to talk to me and that your mother was too sick to be interviewed,” she whispers into his ear. “You ran interference about your family the entire day and a half we were there, and you completely lied about Alsey, so tell me the truth: what's really happened?”

His eyes widen, and his hands grab hers, not sure why he suddenly trusts her with something this big. “I can't talk to you about it,” he whispers as low as he possibly can.
“I'm not allowed to talk about it. If they hear me ...”

“You know what I think you need after that stressful appearance, Haymitch?” Lucilla says in a much louder voice. “A good, relaxing bath.”

Before he knows it, she's turned off the sink taps and is running the bathtub ones instead, which make even more noise. It's a luxury tub, deep, and with jets of rushing water on all sides. “These kinds of tubs take about twenty minutes or so before they're full,” she says in a low, serious voice Haymitch has not heard before. “In the Capitol, you do this when you want to make sure a conversation will be truly private.”

He's bewildered as she takes his hand and holds it in hers and they sit on the tub's edge side by side.

“So if you want,” she says, “for the next twenty minutes, I'm here, all right?” .

**

In the end, they don't talk much about it, because it's awful to say, and besides, he keeps getting distracted, checking the running water to see how much time they have left. But he tells her about the executions, about President Snow's visit. With the release of finally telling someone the truth about what's going on, he's unable to stop himself from crying a little, but she squeezes his hand, and after a minute, he pulls himself together as she turns off the spigots and the room turns eerily quiet by comparison. “Thanks,” is all he says, aware again of the bugs. Lucilla just nods. By silent agreement, they slide down from the tub's edge together, sitting on the bathroom floor in silence, hands already separated.

He doesn't tell her about the loneliness, or about his father, or the nightmares of the arena, or any of the other things he's struggling with, because he can tell by her expression that she's already gotten way more than she bargained for and she doesn't know how to do much more than listen and put her arm around him for comfort, but she's surprisingly good at that. He startles when her arm first falls across his back, then tenses up, stiff in the half-embrace. But she leaves it there, and eventually, he calms down and lays his head on her shoulder and it feels nice somehow.

He worries a little afterwards that he perhaps shouldn't have told her. Her expression is grim and there is an aura about her now, like she wishes she could unhear things.

“You're not like you were an hour ago,” he says, yawning as she walks him out of the bathroom and straight to the bed, where she tucks him in like a mother. He's too grateful and too exhausted to even object, never mind resist.

“Listen to you,” she softly teases him. “You just don't know how to stop being clever, do you?” He can hear a slight manic edge to her words as she strokes his dark curls over and over, but he's drifting quickly into sleep and has no idea how to address it anyway. “No talking now,” she orders. “Just sleep. You need it. I'll see you in the morning.”

He has a nightmare a couple of hours later about his reaping. Except that instead of he and Maysilee, it's him and Lucilla being reaped. Alsey is there too, but she's dressed in Capitol garb, and he realizes that she is their escort. As Alsey draws the names, Lucilla is crying and begging her to explain why she's been reaped, and Alsey tells her there's no reason; it's just how the world works. Lucilla only cries harder. Haymitch feels like he's got a hole in his heart because somehow he knows that all of this is all his fault and there's no going back now; they're both in the arena whether they like it or not.

He wakes with his heart thumping wildly in the dark, and is surprised to see Lucilla – the real flesh and blood Lucilla – asleep in a chair near his bed. He lies there for a while watching her disheveled figure until the rise and fall of her breathing lulls him back into slumber for the rest of a dreamless night.

Go to Chapter 6

Hunger Games Fic: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil (4/11)

millarific — Sun, 29 Dec 2013 03:44:01 GMT

Title: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil
Author: millari
Characters: Haymitch Abernathy, Mags, Beetee, Chaff, President Snow, Haymitch's Dad, Haymitch's Girl, OCs
Pairing: Haymitch/Beetee
Rating: R
Beta: The highly awesome and beautiful trovia
Warnings: Implied references to forced prostitution, canonical character deaths
Summary: On his victory tour, Haymitch soon finds out that the real Games have only just begun, and survival means learning to spin out a web of lies, compromises and self-destruction. The Games' oldest living victor and arguably its most intelligent one show him that even in the tainted life of a Victor, there are still ways to prevail.
A/N: This is a finished multi-chaptered work that is posting about once per week.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

CHAPTER 4
He's chopping more unnecessary wood one day when a Peacekeeper arrives at his house with a carefully folded letter on stiff, white parchment, bearing a gold-leaf stamp that has the straight, hard angles of the Capitol. The stamp is imprinted with the letters “LB”.

Haymitch swallows hard, knowing already what it says: his Victory Tour begins in a month.

Dear Haymitch,

I can't believe that already five months have gone by and it is almost time for us to meet
again. In less than optimal news, I have as yet to be promoted, but the bright spot I am quite looking forward to seeing you again. I've been busy, busy, busy with preparations for the last two weeks! I special-ordered four new wigs. Of course, a District Twelve posting doesn't pay nearly enough to afford that, but I am good at scrimping when I need to, and well, you don't see a District Twelve victor every day, now do you?

Anyway, I'm writing you now to remind you to get any of your affairs in order, because you'll be gone for at least a month and a half, perhaps two if you are as popular in some of the Districts as I believe you will be; and then of course, there's the finale in the Capitol, where you'll be attending parties and getting some advance information on mentoring. Don't worry about clothes and makeup; your stylist and prep team will be coming too and you know they'll get you back up to Capitol standards in no time.

Say hello to your family for me, and tell your mother I would love to pump her for some more information about you before we leave; I didn't really get a chance on Reaping Day (the Reapings always move so fast), and the more I know about you, the more it can only help with my publicity efforts.

Ta-ta!
Lucilla

That night, he goes back into the Hob, looking for the men he knows will have cards and as much as he hates to admit it to himself, liquor. He brings with him plenty of money; so it doesn't take him long to be sitting at a table in in the back of the marketplace in his pristine wool trench coat with a hand of cards and a shot of home-brewed whisky in front of him. The talk is small and sporadic, as the talk among people who are concentrating on card games for money tends to be, but it includes joking and banter, and it includes him sometimes; it's the closest thing Haymitch has had to innocuous conversation in months.

To his surprise, he leaves the shot glass untouched, but returns the next night to the games, hungry to take risks where the consequences mean little to him. In fact, he finds that the more money he loses at these games, the more teasing and camaraderie is directed his way. He becomes the amusing, clever kid among the inveterate old gamblers who laugh at his sarcasm and his cocky bets. He's the easy mark for the middle-aged hustlers who make book at the Reapings, and then during the rest of the year, glean an
easy buck wherever they can.

Every minute he's there – for three straight weeks – is a minute he's not obsessed with thoughts of the upcoming Victory Tour or memories of the arena. Alsey's face doesn't contort with the pain when he's hoping for exactly the right card. When he's surrounded by the laughter and backslapping of old men, he's not remembering his mother telling him how his father never means to hit them, he's just in pain.

He always stays late into the night, because he never worries about running out of money, and as a bonus, the nightmares decrease some, now that he's stumbling into bed completely exhausted, without liquor even.

The last night before Lucilla is expected to arrive, Haymitch loses all his stakes in a spectacularly long night of ribald jokes, good-natured rivalries and some serious betting wars. Why not, he figures?

Tomorrow he'll be on a train filled with more food than he could eat in a year and all manner of finery will be provided to him free of charge. He walks home in the pitch black of a cloudy night, whistling pleasantly to himself. He stops dead though, at the sight of his house.

He knows he didn't leave the lights on.

He feels around for a substantial rock on the ground, suspecting one of the many criminals he's been socializing with lately. Someone must have figured out by now that it would be easier to relieve him of his money all at once instead of little by little at cards. He finds he's strangely looking forward to a fight. He gets a tiny adrenaline rush and feels for a moment like he's back in the arena.

But when he walks inside and sees the man with the paper-white hair sitting in the most comfortable chair in his living room, the rock falls from his hand and tumbles loudly on the wood floor.

“Mister Abernathy.” President Snow's voice is calm, deliberate and with just a touch of the Capitol accent. It's not like Lucilla's, though. On him, it doesn't sound frivolous at all.

“Won't you have a seat? I'd like to talk.”

When Haymitch can move again, he walks slowly towards the President of Panem, hands in fists at his sides. When he's about three feet away from the chair, he takes the running leap for Snow's throat he's been planning for months in his head. He doesn't even worry anymore about the consequences. What does he have left to live for?

So he feels surprised and confused, and cheated when the very air slams right into his face, and his ears fill with an ever-so-slight hum. There is debilitating pain all over his body. Snow doesn't have a mark on him, though, because Haymitch never even got close enough to touch him.

“Forgive me,” Snow apologizes, as calm and quiet as ever. “I have a weakness for irony.”

Haymitch stands there in bewilderment, gingerly touching his aching nose. While he contemplates the possibility that it's broken, he realizes what has happened: Snow has himself surrounded with a force field, like the one that protected the walls of the arena. Except this one doesn't allow things to enter and bounce back.

This one is like running into a flat, unyielding wall.

“Was the setting too high?” Snow asks, shaking his head, as if full of concern. “Regrettable. But I wouldn't worry. A visible bruise or two is always a good image for a victor. Makes you look like a fighter.”

“You killed my mother and my brother and Alsey!” Haymitch snarls in disbelief at him. He wants to try to smash through that force field, but he knows it will be no use. “And you're talking to me about my image?”

“Do not discount the power of image, Mister Abernathy. It carves attitudes into people far more deeply than any blade, which is precisely why I am here today in fact – to discuss image.”

His words are delivered with an air of tedium, as if he's Haymitch's father – a refined, intelligent version of his father, that is – who's tired and a bit annoyed to be explaining the basics of the world for the umpteenth time.

“Why are you doing this?” Haymitch wants to rail at him, but the words come out more like begging. “I know you killed them all to punish me, why? What did I do that was so terrible?”

Snow raises an eyebrow.

“What? Just because I found out how your damn game worked? Even Cantebury didn't care!”

There is another long silence.

“Artemis Cantebury is a skilled Gamesmaker, one of the most skilled we've had in years,” Snow observes. “The Games arena is where his strengths lie. Luckily, I do not need Artemis in the arena of politics, where he would have perished on Day One.” He cocks his head. “You disappoint me, young man. I must admit. I thought you skilled at seeing the bigger picture.”

The man is as unruffled as he is at the Games, or on television appearances. It's enraging. Haymitch picks up the rock that he dropped earlier, even though they both know it will not do any good, and Snow does not even flinch as Haymitch draws his arm back, roaring, and throws it as hard as he can against the force field anyway.

There is a loud disturbance in the hum, a loud, rippling sound, and the rock sits impotently on the floor in between them.

“Trying to join your family, are you?” Snow taunts, hands coming together in slow motion, fingers pressing themselves into a thoughtful steeple under his chin. “But we both know that you're not really the type for suicide; if you were, you wouldn't have won.”

Haymitch blinks a moment, then sinks into a chair opposite Snow. “I wasn't trying to make you mad, you know. Why would I do that?” He sighs deeply. “All I wanted was to get home.”

“Haymitch,” Snow says softly, again with that infuriating evenness. “We are going to be old friends for many years to come. I would hope that we didn't start out this relationship with lying.”

Haymitch stares at him, bewildered. “What are you talking about? I'm not lying.”

Snow shakes his head. “But you are,” he says, like it wounds him. A surreal part of Haymitch's brain wonders if Snow subjects his monstrous daughter to this kind of flat, emotionless lecturing.

“In the arena, you weren't just trying to get home, Mister Abernathy. You had something else much more rebellious in mind.”

“And what's that?” he snaps.

“You wanted to beat the Games.”

“So? That's how I was going to get home.”

Snow shakes his head, this time, seeming oddly genuine in his desire to explain. “Ordinary players want to beat the other players in the arena. But what you did has implications far beyond the arena, dangerous implications.”

“Then why didn't you just tell me to stop? Why go and kill all these people I care about? I would have done whatever you wanted.”

“You are doing whatever I want,” Snow reminds him.

Haymitch stops short at the truth of that.

Snow holds up an admonishing finger. “This isn't just about you anymore. The seeds of rebellion are sown when the ruling authority is made to look foolish or weak. By using your government’s creation against itself, you have accomplished the former. Because I must keep you alive, you have also managed the latter. But your insidious seeds will not be allowed to bloom. You are going to behave on this tour, and you are not going to draw attention to your clever antics in the arena. No one will ask you about it and you will not offer, is that clear?”

Haymitch slouches in the chair even further.

“Alsey, my Ma, Jackson,” he insists. “They had nothing to do with this. Why take your revenge on them?” His hands grip the arms of the chair he's sitting in until his knuckles turn white with tension. “They were the least rebellious people on the planet!”

Again, Snow's eyes narrow with disappointment. “Revenge?” he says with mild annoyance, as if he is offended by the choice of words, by Haymitch's denseness. “I've already told you, this isn't about you.” He shakes his head back and forth in slow movements. “This is about the fabric of our nation. The sooner you understand that, the smoother this will go.”

He sits back in his chair, looking Haymitch over like a lion considering its prey. “Your loved ones are dead because the people in this district, the other victors, they all need to see the consequences for the kind of thinking you displayed in the Games.”

“And what about in the Capitol?” Haymitch realizes suddenly. “Do they know that you killed the family of this year's victor?”

“Ah, that is a more subtle business,” he concedes. “You will especially not bring that up anywhere outside of District 12, by the way, or there will be more consequences, do you understand? The Capitol will find out in the way I deem most effective.”

Haymitch briefly wonders what that means. “So I keep quiet, or else what?” he challenges.

Instead of answering, Snow takes quiet assessment of him, sending a chill through Haymitch's body that is more unnerving than any verbal threats.

“You need me as mentor next year,” he insists, trying to keep the growing unease out of his voice. “They will notice if I am not there, the victor who saw through the game.”

Eventually, Snow nods, but it doesn't seem nearly enough like a concession for Haymitch's comfort.

“What else can you do to me?” he insists, worried that right now, Snow is right: he isn't able to see the bigger picture. There is a slight tremor in Haymitch's hands and he gives in to the compulsion to fill Snow's deliberate silences. “You've already killed everyone who means anything to me.”

“I am not so sure that that is true.” Snow raises an eyebrow. “You still have a father.”

At that, Haymitch laughs long and hard, more than is natural, in order to cover his sense of relief. “Go ahead,” he taunts. “He's a drunk who liked to hit me and my mother and who knows when he would have started in on my little brother too if you hadn't killed him. Notice how my father's not living here with me? There's plenty of reason for that.” When Snow doesn't respond, Haymitch adds self-consciously, “Seriously, you'd be doing me a favor.”

For the first time since Haymitch has ever met the President, the smile that blooms on Snow's face reaches all the way to his eyes. He seems genuinely pleased at something, like he's just gotten exactly what he wants for his birthday.

“I will keep that in mind, Mister Abernathy.”

The buzzing hum all around Snow flashes off and a couple of Peacekeepers materialize to escort him out.

“Oh, and by the way,” Snow says in parting. “Stop trying to play havoc with the local economy here. You won't be doing them any good in the long run, trust me.

He rises out of his chair with a formal dignity. “And watch the gambling,” he adds. “There's nothing more pathetic than a penniless victor.”

It shouldn't, given all the surveillance he lives under every day. But it amazes Haymitch to imagine President Snow sitting in his office with a viewscreen watching Haymitch buy food and play cards. “You seriously need to find better hobbies,” he snarls at him before he thinks better of it.

Snow chuckles with an air of indulgence, but his words come at Haymitch like the lash of a whip. “And so do you. I don't think you want any more blood on your hands, do you?”

Haymitch swallows hard.

“It's all your choice,” says Snow as he walks out the door. “It always has been.”

**

The next day, still shaken and feeling a mild sense of dread, Haymitch meets Lucilla's train.

The afternoon sun is an orange ball already starting to disappear under the horizon when the gleaming silver high-speed Capitol vehicle glides almost noiselessly to a stop in shabby District Twelve, and the only occupants are the woman herself – who arrives in a flurry of excitement, babbling, and an ever-changing parade of clothes and wigs – and the District Twelve prep team, who respond to him in a sort of chaotic unison with loud, dismayed cries of chagrin.

“Oh, for the love of the Capitol, Haymitch!” shrieks Lenta, his head stylist, in a tone so piercing, it turns the heads of the few Twelve residents running the station for this occasion. “How on earth did you even grow your hair out that long in six months?”

Haymitch just stops himself from cringing visibly with embarrassment. Lenta doesn't seem to notice as she reaches out and pulls at his hair, her fingers probing the texture of it like a buyer in the Hob checking a vegetable for rot.

“All that work,” sighs Preen next to her, a candy-colored wisp of a young woman only a few years older than Haymitch. “All for nothing.”

“Oh, nonsense.” Lucilla pats Lenta's shoulder reassuringly. “You worked miracles on him six months ago, you can do it again, right? I’m sure those wild curls of his are already shuddering at the sight of you, love.” But for the first time since his prep team styled him last year for his Games, Haymitch notices Lucillla gazing at his appearance again with a very Capitolesque look of snobbish distaste.

“Besides ...” Her pitch shoots up two octaves, and she devolves into childish singsong tones: “...we brought wardrobe!” She gestures towards the train. “We've converted a whole car into your dressing room, Haymitch. That's how much there is. You'll have plenty to choose from on each stop.”

He can't help gaping at her, then at the car. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the people in the station pretending not to watch them, as their expressions narrow into disdain.

“There's a car waiting,” he says quickly. “It'll take us to the Justice Hall.”

**

The first stop on his Victory Tour is District Eleven, where he is thrust upon a stage with Chaff – a dark-skinned, dark-haired victor from five years before. Haymitch notices that he still has the toned muscular arms and broad shoulders of a man who works the land, even though Haymitch is sure that Chaff hasn't had to touch a plow since he came home a victor. Siting next to him on stage, Haymitch finds himself staring at the strength of Chaff's body, feeling underfed and inadequate every time he does, despite six months of more than enough food to eat from the Capitol.

For almost an hour, he and Chaff are forced to make small talk with a pink-haired journalist whose name he will forget the minute he walks off over lots of jump cuts and dramatic soundtracks - highlights of the most memorable moments of each of their Games. She compares and contrasts their fighting techniques and strategies while a sullen audience stands by watching.

It's clear that the journalist is only thinking about how far this interview is getting her up the career ladder. She's too busy flashing him and Chaff sympathetic nods and meaningful winks - it's all just fun and games for you two now that your Games are over, eh, boys? - to notice how passively angry the audience is acting. Haymitch tries to warm up to the task before him, remembering Snow's visit, and he tries to include Chaff in his answers, giving him openings to chime in. But Chaff gives him absolutely nothing and focuses on the journalist the entire time, like Haymitch is a piece of rotting meat whose smell he can't stand but must bear.

Chaff's behavior is a bit of a mystery until the journalist plays a clip of one of Haymitch's kills and suddenly it all makes sense – Chaff's cool distance, the angry expressions and pin-drop silences of the audience: Haymitch was personally responsible for killing off this district's male tribute. He had been nameless to Haymitch at the time; he'd kept them all nameless in his head as much as possible, needing them to just be faces attached to statistics so he could murder them.

“It was a clean kill,” the journalist praises Haymitch's form, as if it had nothing to do with killing another human being at all. “I bet he never even knew what hit him.”

Haymitch sits there speechless, more aware than ever before of how callous the Capitol journalists are. He's watched them on television for years, but it's different up here on the dais, when it was his kill. Is she trying to win him points with the audience? Is she following a directive to throw the power of the Games into all their faces? Or maybe she's just trying to somehow score points back home with her bosses.

From then on, his face falls into a permanent scowl, and he focuses his gaze mostly on Chaff's stump of a hand. He spends the rest of the interview imagining how much he'd like to face President Snow in the arena.

The Victory Tour dinner is held, as they usually are, in the Justice Hall's banquet room. Of course, only the elite of District Eleven are invited – Chaff's relatives, the Head Peacekeeper, and various agricultural overseers. It becomes quickly clear from their demeanor and skin color, that everyone in power here, with the exception of Chaff, is not from Eleven.

Also strange is the fact that none of the other victors from Eleven are here. Haymitch knows there are more: he's seen them on television. Usually, almost all a district's victors make an appearance at the Tour festivities, except sometimes in the Career districts, where they have so many victors, they seem to rotate out each year. Haymitch and Chaff sit next to each other at a palatial marble table filled with food, pointedly avoiding looking or talking to each other.

Haymitch is surprised to see that District 11’s mayor is also not from here. He’s pale, mostly bald, and thinner than he would have expected from someone who runs anything important. He shakes Haymitch's hand with a weak grip and makes tedious small talk with him for a while about not much of anything, until Chaff interrupts:

“Mayor Blomfeld, I think your wife is over there looking for you.”

The mayor's eyes have dark lines underneath them, like he hasn't been sleeping well, or is sick. He looks across the room to where Chaff is gesturing and smiles at the tall, athletic woman waving him over. She looks a lot healthier than her husband.

“So she is,” Blomfeld agrees. “Thanks, Chaff. See you later, boys.”

Haymitch watches him go, wondering.

“Is he ...” he begins.

“Cancer,” Chaff answers the question before Haymitch can ask it. His answer is flat, unemotional.

“What kind?” he asks immediately. District Twelve's miners are no strangers to lung cancer.

Chaff shrugs. “Who cares? It’s all over his body now. All those years in the fields as a Peacekeeper, then as an overseer, before he got jumped up all the way to mayor. From the stuff they spray on the fruit to keep the bugs off.”

There is a scowl etched onto his face, weather-beaten from having spent every day of his childhood working the fields. Haymitch takes one last look back at the Mayor, his figure slightly hunched as he talks to his wife. She puts a concerned hand on his shoulder.

“So he’s from District Two?”

Chaff nods.

“Why isn’t someone from Eleven the mayor?” he asks, thinking of Mayor Undersee back home, who inherited the job from her father.

“Why do you think?” Chaff snarls, like he thinks Haymitch is really stupid. Nor does he elaborate.

“That man used to shove his workers, grown men, to the ground simply for not working fast enough,” he remarks after Haymitch says nothing for several seconds. “He liked the whip plenty, too. Honestly, I can’t think of anyone more deserving.”

Haymitch’s eyes widen. Even though Chaff muttered that last part pretty quietly, there are dozens of microphones and cameras here. If any of them picked him up …

His alarmed expression apparently gets Chaff’s attention: he guffaws raucously, acting as if Haymitch just told him a hilarious dirty joke.

“You don't look so clever, Haymitch,” he snorts. “Don't you know by now? They just edit out what they don't want to see or hear.”

Haymitch’s fingers run through his hair in a nervous gesture, and the stiff, glossy and straightened feel of it startles him as soon as he touches it. His prep team tamed the curls right out of him for tonight’s appearance, and the reminder makes him ponder on his team a moment: they certainly seem to just blot out anything they don’t want to hear, don’t they?

His tongue wets his lips. If what Chaff is saying is true, then right now is maybe the best time and place to do this.

“Chaff,” he begins, watching the man whose eyes are now gazing into the crowd, unfocused. But there is no reply.

“Uh,” he tries again, after an awkward moment of silence has passed. His fist clenches under the table in his lap. “I …” he tries, then falters. “Listen, I want you to know … I didn’t … like it.”

Silence.

Chaff’s gaze doesn’t waver, still directed towards the people clustered in corners of the dining hall. At this point, Haymitch isn’t sure if he’d prefer Chaff to meet his eyes or not.

“I didn’t like killing him,” he elaborates, when Chaff still hasn’t said anything. “Your tribute. I didn’t want to. I mean, I did want to live, but I …”

His head turns swiftly towards Haymitch, the muscles in his face tight with anger ready to explode.

“What?” The word comes out in a mixture of horror and accusation as Chaff stares at him. “Did you enjoy it? Seriously, kid. Why would you even bring up an idea like that?”

He only backs off when he sees the pain streak across Haymitch’s face. He closes his eyes, shaking his head, as if exhausted or perhaps frustrated.

“Look, kid, I …” He sighs and looks away again. “To be honest, I really can’t be seen talking to you right now.”

Haymitch swallows hard. Just as he suspected. It’s one thing to be forced to make small talk with Haymitch for hours on camera. It’s an entirely different thing for the district residents to see him on television chitchatting with Haymitch willingly, as if he and Haymitch are friends, as if the death of their children is nothing but play. And here Haymitch is, selfishly demanding absolution from Chaff, like it’s the only thing that matters.

“Yeah,” he grunts finally. “I figured that. I just … it’s just that …” His voice trails off, unable to articulate. “Listen, I just wanted to say I’m sorry. That’s all.”

“Fucking victory tours,” Chaff growls, keeping his eyes away from Haymitch. He propels himself out of his chair, nearly kicking it backward in his haste. “I need a drink.”

And he’s up and gone before Haymitch can react, in long, angry strides towards the bar. He throws himself onto a stool and leans in to catch the bartender’s attention as fast as he can. The bartender cocks his head a moment, seeming to be in doubt as he responds to Chaff, who reacts by jerking back in his seat with a scowl. The bartender looks paralyzed with indecision for a moment, then spins around on his heel and grabs a liquor bottle on a shelf behind him, pouring it into a glass that he hands Chaff with a resigned air. The entire contents are gone in an instant, and Chaff slams down the glass onto the bar, gesturing with his fingers to demand another.

Haymitch exhales unhappily. There’s just no way Chaff is not going to hate Haymitch for a good long time. And of course our consoles are going to be right next to each other, every damn year, he thinks.

“Mister Abernathy?”

A halting baritone sounds behind him, and he wishes he could just refuse to turn around. He doesn’t want to give any more autographs, accept any more congratulations, do any more of this bullshit that he already found humiliating in Twelve. He keeps staring at Chaff, who is now hunched over his glass at the bar, as if to protect it – or perhaps himself – from something.

“Haymitch?” the voice repeats.

When he finally gives in and turns around, he sees two men standing there, as dark-skinned as Chaff and everyone else in this district who isn’t Capitol. One of them even has a similar build to Chaff, and the same kind of rounded face, while the other man is of slimmer, taller build. Both are wearing formal suits, but as he looks closer, he can see how the suits look somehow ill-fitting, despite them having been tailored to their bodies. It’s as if they don’t know quite how to wear them; all the folds and pleats are in just slightly the wrong places.

The one with the round face abruptly thrusts his hand out at Haymitch. “I'm Flax.” His words sound rushed, as if he had to blurt them out to get them out at all. “We wanted to meet you,” he says, his voice clipped. “We wanted to talk to you, about our son.”

Haymitch’s eyes narrow in silent confusion. Their son? Then he notices that the skinny, tall one has his hand resting on one of the round-faced man’s broad, muscular shoulders, and it hits him that they are not brothers, or friends. They are a … couple.

He’s heard of this sort of thing before, occasionally in derisive, muttered remarks about the Capitolites they see on the viewscreens back home during the Games. During the recaps of the Hunger Games festivities going on in the Capitol, which they tend to show during the Games’ lulls as a way to keep things interesting, it’s not uncommon to see two men together, or a woman with a woman at the victory banquets in Snow’s mansion. Sometimes it’s even the case with big celebrities. Everybody back home acts like that sort of relationship is an unnatural Capitol thing, and therefore not to be trusted or talked about really. Certainly, he’s never seen two men in Twelve being together like this. No one would dare.

But these two, he thinks, there’s nothing Capitol about them.

“What do you want?” Lucilla wouldn’t approve of his tone with them, but he’s still a bit too lost in his own thoughts to phrase it more politely, and besides, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, he thinks.

But then just as the man opens his mouth to speak again, the meaning behind the man’s words sink in and a rising panic sets in.

Our son.

Oh, shit.

Their son was the District Eleven male tribute. I killed him.

“We want to tell you about our son,” the man repeats. “His name was Orlando. He was the male tribute this year.”

Haymitch mutters a curse under his breath. So that’s his name. They hadn’t said it once during the interview today.

“I don’t …” he begins, gruff with awkward guilt. “I wish I knew what to say to you.” The only thing he’s tried so far to say about provoked an ugly reaction in Chaff. The thought of causing that kind of anger in a tribute’s grieving parents is too awful to imagine.

Flax’s husband still has his hand on Flax’s shoulder. Haymitch's gaze jerks away at the intimate gesture between the two men, feeling awkward, like he's staring.

“Haymitch, you don’t have to say anything,” the man says. “That wasn’t the point of this. We hold no grudges towards you. We know that if Orlando had gotten the right chance, things could have easily wound up reversed.”

“We just wanted to …” Flax picks up the thread of his partner's words. “...well, I wanted to …” he corrects, but then he doesn’t seem able to finish.

“Flax, we came to this decision together, remember?” the other man corrects with an encouraging air.

“Of course, of course,” Flax hurries to acknowledge, then addresses Haymitch again. “You see, we held a lot of anger for the first few months. At you, at the Games, for taking away Orlando …”

Haymitch is startled by the frank admission into meeting their gazes again for a moment.

“Careful,” he murmurs, hoping his voice is low enough. “There are about a million microphones in this room.” He knows Chaff thinks they just edit out the unacceptable bits, but Snow had killed everyone he loved for something far less direct than this.

Flax purses his lips with distaste. “Haymitch, they took our only son. What can they do to us anymore? Our little boy, whom we’ve had since he was just one day old.” Flax turns to his husband and pulls him close into an embrace seeking comfort. The gesture is so flustering to see between two men that Haymitch's gaze drops again, in confusion and embarrassment.

“Would you please look me in the eye when I’m talking to you about this, young man?” Flax demands. “I know this isn’t your fault; but I think I deserve that much."

Haymitch can feel his own face settling into a default scowl he wishes wasn’t there, but it’s already too late to change that.

“Look, I didn’t know your son,” he says. “I’m sorry, but I never even talked to him. I didn’t talk to anyone besides my district partner. I certainly didn’t want to …”

He realizes he can’t make himself say the words to finish that sentence. He can’t say, I didn’t want to kill him, not to them.

Yet anything else he could say just sounds hollow and false.

“I just wanted to come home,” he finishes, feeling depleted. “That’s all I wanted.”

The words remind him of the conversation with Snow, and he stands there, hands in fists at his sides, hating his life.

Flax nods, a tight smile on his face, eyes shining with tears he’s holding back as he utters a short, sharp noise of emotion.

“Of course you did,” he says, his voice thick. “That’s all Orlando wanted too.”

Before he knows what’s happening, the man catches him in a bone-crunching embrace that makes him freeze with surprise and confusion. He can hear the man’s breaths, heavy with emotion, in his ear. “Thank you, son, for telling me that. You have our forgiveness, all right?” he whispers. “That’s what we came here for. To forgive you.”

Why? he asks inwardly, but he stands there in the embrace, feeling awkward and wholly undeserving.

“Thirteen’s smoking ashes, Flax, what the fuck are you doing here? I told you specifically not to do this.”

Chaff’s angry voice breaks up the moment, his words rapidly advancing towards them as Flax lets Haymitch go.

“This isn’t your decision, Brother,” Flax says firmly. “So you can just stay out of it. This is about me and Melio and our grief, not what you want.”

Chaff swears some more. He’s standing next to Haymitch, a half-filled glass sloshing drops of liquor onto his hand as he gestures at Flax. He never once looks at Haymitch. “I told you to stay away from him.”

“Oh, and because you’re the big bad Victor, now you get to control how your big brother mourns?” Flax's husband Melio jumps in, his eyes having turned into narrow slits that are beading on Chaff. “Do not presume to tell us how to grieve our child,” he orders, words clipped with deadly precision.

Haymitch’s head whirls around to gaze at Chaff, then back at Flax. They are brothers?

“It’s all right, Melio,” Flax reassures him with a calming hand on his arm; but his anger hasn’t diminished either. “He can try to order me around all he wants,” he says with bitter imperiousness. “I’ve already done what I came to do.”

“He was my nephew, you know,” Chaff retorts, his undertone just as bitter. “I’m mourning him too.”

Suddenly, Chaff’s behavior during the interview, his sullenness towards Haymitch, the way his eyes had darted back and forth with restless anger every time they were near each other, makes complete, horrible sense.

No wonder Chaff hasn’t even given him a chance to apologize.

“Oh, sure,” Flax’s sarcasm is spread thick with disdain. “Mourning your way down to the bottom of the next bottle of whisky, are you? Heartfelt. That strategy should bring home the Victors next year, eh?”

Haymitch watches as Chaff stiffens. “Fuck you, Flax. I tried everything I could possibly do to bring that boy home, and you know it.” His voice is low and filled with fury. “Everything I could fucking think of. You’ve got no right to speak to me that way.”

“Fine,” Flax snaps back at him. “You’ve chosen your way to grieve.” He gestures at the drink still in Chaff’s good hand. “So leave us in peace to choose ours. We don’t need you here, trying to manage everything as usual.”

Chaff glares at his brother, then takes another defiant gulp out of his glass. “And I don’t need to listen to this crap,” he says, heading back toward the bar, slamming his glass down. He makes several agitated gestures to the bartender, clearly demanding more alcohol. When he gets it, he hunches back down again over his glass, drinking with a stony face. Haymitch ends up watching him drink all night, unable to say anything to him, unable to shake off the growing unease that he is looking at a vision of his future.

Go to Chapter 5

Fic: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil (3/11)

millarific — Sun, 22 Dec 2013 16:12:56 GMT

Title: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil
Author: millari
Characters: Haymitch Abernathy, Mags, Beetee, Chaff, President Snow, Haymitch's Dad, Haymitch's Girl, OCs
Pairing: Haymitch/Beetee
Rating: R
Beta: The highly awesome and beautiful trovia
Warnings: Implied references to forced prostitution, canonical character deaths
Summary: On his victory tour, Haymitch soon finds out that the real Games have only just begun, and survival means learning to spin out a web of lies, compromises and self-destruction. The Games' oldest living victor and arguably its most intelligent one show him that even in the tainted life of a Victor, there are still ways to prevail.
A/N: This is a finished multi-chaptered work that is posting about once per week.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2

CHAPTER 3
By the third month since his return to the district, Haymitch is still keeping to his half-hour sleeping regimen. But by now, all the intermittent sleeping has truly caught up with him, and he feels exhausted all the time. Worst of all, the nightmares don't diminsh with time.

He finds his body giving in to sleep during the day – on his feet, in a chair, in front of a television he's got blaring in yet another desperate attempt to stay awake a while longer. The nightmares – of his Ma and Jackson being shot, of the ax hurtling straight into the forehead of the girl from District 1 – start weaving their way into his lucid dreams during the day and there is no longer any way to escape.

He gives in to the inevitable, and decides that if the nightmares are going to haunt him anyway, he has little reason to get up from bed at all. He gets up mostly only to piss or to stuff some packaged snack food from the Capitol into his mouth. He's a victor, so he no longer has any obligations; no job, no family he talks to, no need to remember anything except his Victory Tour and then Reaping Day once a year, for the rest of his life. His life narrows down to just a few tasks – eating, bodily functions, setting alarms, dragging in the previous month's boxes of food before the Peacekeepers can show up with a new one: the last thing he wants to do is give the Peacekeepers cause to break into his house to check that he's still alive.

He's not really. Alive. But after four months of this, he just doesn't care. He's not sure how he's going to live the rest of his life this way.

One day, when he's rustling through the last dregs of the Capitol boxes for something to eat, a bottle of wine in there catches his eye. For the first time in his life, he's tempted by it. He stands stock-still for a good minute staring at the unopened bottle, holding it at arm's length in front of him in thought.

No. He shoves it back into the box. Definitely not. He never wants to end up like Randall Abernathy. Never.

But then, one day, when he realizes he's spent the last several days mostly staring at the ceiling, trying with little success to keep his mind completely empty, it occurs to him to wonder: how different is this from being passed out drunk all the time like his father?

He gets up and gets dressed, even though it's already long past dark, and sits in his well-lit house. After dithering over the idea for a half-hour, he gets up and goes digging again through the box. There is a wooden device included in the box with a piece of spiraled metal, and after several minutes of pondering the device, he figures out how to use it to get the bottle open and finds a set of wineglasses he didn't even know were in his kitchen cabinets.

Having never drank alcohol before, the second glass hits him pretty hard, but he finds himself pleasantly plastered. It doesn't take away the intrusive thoughts that constantly plague him, but it does make them a little more distant, and it's a relief from having to focus constantly on pushing them away. Mostly, it makes him extremely sleepy.

He stumbles into bed, forgetting to set an alarm to wake him up. He ends up sleeping the whole night. When he wakes up the next day, in the early afternoon, he feels a bit wrung out from having slept too long, but he can think more clearly than in months.

To his amazement, he doesn't remember having a single dream.

Repeating the experiment the next night to similar effect, he realizes he has stumbled upon a useful tool. It sure as hell beats waking himself up every half hour and walking around like someone dead.

He starts drinking a little every evening, just enough to get to a point where he feels thick, but not so dizzy that he can't still toddle across the house and into fall into bed. The rest of the day, he spends trying to push away the invasive thoughts and memories with the television, now not on just to provide noise, but to keep his mind occupied. It's television provided by the Capitol, so it has the same shows Haymitch remembers seeing in the background on the televisions in the Training Center there. This means, of course, one channel of mostly pro-Capitol and pro-Snow documentaries and educational shows, as well as one channel of shows purely about the Games. He studiously avoids both of these. There is also a channel with soap operas and a lot of gossip shows about movie stars and other celebrities in the Capitol. He opts for the this mindless stuff, because it's the least offensive, and he likes how the constant change of topic keeps his mind distracted, even if it is with utter stupidity. After a while, he also discovers that these shows have disturbing yet fascinating glimpses into the lives of other victors.

One night, he watches a gossipy feature on Cooper Brink, a glamorous victor from District Ten. She's being featured for having been photographed on the arm of a different rich and famous person practically every night she's ever been in the Capitol since she won the 42nd.

“What can I say, I just like everybody,” coos the woman in a clip filmed at some movie awards ceremony Haymitch has never heard of, outside a large Capitol building with pink marble pillars. Her long, voluminous black hair cascades over a gold satin gown with hundreds of sequins that glitter in the harsh camera lights, and she's wearing thick, garish makeup that probably cost more money than a family in the Seam will ever see in their lives. Her demeanor is sickeningly artificial, in a way that makes even Lucilla seem restrained. She's so over-the-top, Haymitch has a momentary inkling that she's faking it, or trying too hard, or something like that, although none of those options really make sense.

“Would you believe, Indira,” the show cuts back to its host, Lucius Marin, skin painted in a yellow pea color with a navy blue wig and makeup almost as heavy as the Victor's. He's talking to his co-host, whom Haymitch has learned is named Indira Wasser. “Would you believe,” he repeats for dramatic effect, “that Miss Brink has gone on over six hundred known dates since becoming a victor eight and a half years ago?” The man's nauseatingly white teeth flash at Haymitch through the screen. “And that's only counting the ones that have taken place in public,” he says suggestively.

Indira, her own face, neck and arms made an inhumanly pale white by generous application of shimmering powder, chimes in with a mildly reproachful tone, “Perhaps, Lucius, we've stumbled upon the reason why District Ten has not been known as one of the more highly-achieving districts.”

“Quite possibly,” Marin agrees, but he wags a finger of protest. “Still, you have to admit, we've seen plenty of victors from Districts One and Two who are quite the social butterflies and yet still manage to bring home their tributes.”

Wasser's ruby-red wig nods vigorously. “A very good point, Lucius. Speaking of the Careers, let's take a look at the little report our new correspondent Rainbow Skye Candy has put together on Dare Jackson, victor of the 41st Hunger Games...”

On another night, he runs across an orchestral performance, which he almost zaps right by, but then is stopped in his tracks by a violin solo so sad, it's mesmerizing. The violinist is playing to a packed concert hall that is utterly, silently rapt before the beauty he is offering up. As the last note sounds, the crowd rises in thunderous, ecstatic applause. Afterwards, the program mentions briefly that the man in the purple wig is Gang Chen of District Ten, the victor of the 43rd Games. The short biographical text that appears on the screen as he plays mentions that he lives full-time in the Capitol and is a professional violinist with the Capitol Chamber Orchestra.

How can these victors even live with themselves, he wonders? The Careers from One and Two he at least understands. From what he's seen of them on television and in person, they seem pretty brainwashed to so love the Capitol. But others, people from the outlier districts like his – the Gang Chens and the Cooper Brinks – what would make them want to live their lives around these people who watched them kill other children for their entertainment? How sick is that? These adoring audiences would have been just as happy to watch them die if things had gone differently.

Did something about being a victor change them? Will it change him too?

But that's nonsense. It's already changed him, turned him into a bit of a drunk, and a generally useless human being. He shoves away the comparisons to his father as fast he possibly can.

But he's unwilling to go back to the nightmares and the zombie-like days again. The nights are better now. His days are still difficult, full of waking daydreams of the arena, or his imaginings of the executions of his family, but he refuses to start drinking during the day as well. And besides, during the day, he can mostly will them away with distracting activities.

He knows for sure things are improving when for the first time in four months, he starts looking for some. Some that don't involve staring at a television screen anyway.

He begins chopping wood for the decorative fireplace in his home, even though he has electric heat. He sifts through the boxes of food he's been getting and digs a compost pile in the yard for the rotting, perishable items that have been sitting for weeks, thankful that no one from the district comes here and would see all that food so criminally wasted. He saves what he can and actually begins warming things up for something resembling a couple of meals a day. He gradually cleans up his house and gets it functional again.

He decides to try going back into town.

He tells himself he wants to augment his supplies, but the truth is, the Capitol provides pretty much everything he needs. Really, he's just craving something new to look at, maybe a person or two to make idle chit-chat with, to remind himself that he still exists. He's always been a loner, thanks to the people of the district deciding when Haymitch was too young to understand, that interacting with Randall Abernathy’s family just wasn't worth the hassle of interacting with Randall Abernathy himself and the bitterly jealous way he guarded his family from the world’s prying eyes. But at least before the Games, teachers had to talk to him sometimes. And there were the other students too. Sometimes they'd talk to him. There were the merchants in the Hob where he'd make trades to get things for the family. And of course, there was Alsey, the one he talked to the most and who actually wanted to listen to when he talked back.

It's been four months since Haymitch has talked to anyone at all. And to his surprise, he realizes he's craving human contact.

When push comes to shove though, he finds he's a little intimidated at the idea of approaching anyone, remembering how people reacted to his arrival home in the town square. And so he decides the Hob is a logical place to start. No one there ever says no to money, no matter who's holding the coins.

When he gets there the next day, it's the early afternoon, so there are only a few people milling about, mothers with small children making purchases for their families, men out of work, a few schoolchildren out for the day who've been sent with precious coins or with things to barter. At first, no one seems to notice him.

But it doesn't take long for him to start seeing the shocked, then wary faces. Some people visibly back away, or pull their children closer. Everyone is avoiding him like he's a virus let loose in a hospital ward.

He scowls and pulls into himself, eager to be done with his errands now. He buys some some cold sausage, venison and a package of rabbit innards from Greasy Sae, a woman about his mom's age, who at least looks her new and richest customer in the eye and manages to say hello.

Next, he makes himself go to Eddard Bolt's tailor shop, over in merchants' alley, an area where Haymitch has almost never shopped. But now he's the richest man in town, and lately since he's been actually getting out of bed and bathing and all, he's realized that he didn't take hardly anything with him when he left his parents' house. The clothes he's wearing today are the ones for the victory celebration that never happened.

Bolt visibly suppresses the look of surprise on his face when Haymitch walks into his shop, and to Haymitch's relief, is quickly unflappable about taking his cash. As the man's fingers graze over Haymitch's body, taking thorough measurements, the feel of them moving so confidently with the tape at first calls up disturbing sense memories of his Capitol stylists at work. But then the lack of inane chatter his stylists would have made calms that association down and he gives into the absurdly welcome touch of another human being.

“Now, Haymitch.” Katherine Abernathy tuts affectionately, as her fingers run a smooth, firm crease, pinning a hem along the front of Haymitch's first Reaping shirt, which she began making after he turned twelve. “I've worked hard on making this shirt, which included dismantling a very nice linen dress that goes all the way back to your great-grandmother's days. You're getting to be old enough to take care of your clothes now, and I intend for this shirt to last long enough to pass down to Jackson, and then maybe even to one of my grandchildren.”

Haymitch nods, silently reveling in the way he feels enclosed in her hands when she does this work. It's so rare that she touches him at all anymore in a way that isn't thought out first, looking over her shoulder to see if his father is watching.

“Honey?” she says as she pulls a sleeve taut and places a pin. Her voice has gone low and serious, like when she's about to give him a lecture.

“Yeah, Mom?” he replies, surprised and wondering what he's done wrong. He tries to be good so that his mom won't be worried, and his dad won't get mad in the evenings when he comes home from work, covered in coal dust, in a bad mood that only gets worse after he's had some whisky.

“I've been wanting to talk to you about something, something that should stay just between us, okay? I don't want you to talk about it with your father or with Jackson.”

“Okay.” His brother is in his room playing, and his father is at work.

“Good.” She looks up at him and smiles a bit too broadly. He knows when she smiles like this that she's worried. “It's just that, the other day, you tried to hug me because I'd fixed your toy, and I wouldn't let you. I pushed you away and said you were a man now. Do you remember that?”

He looks away. “Yeah,” he says, remembering the shame when he'd forgot himself and tried to thank her for sewing up the frayed stitches on his kickball. His father had snapped at them out of nowhere: “For love of the Capitol, Katherine, he's your son, not a wee girl.”

He hadn't even known his father was in the room. His mom had stiffened, then pushed Haymitch away, like an animal flinching from a blow. Haymitch had stiffened too, because he knew that tone was the start of something in his dad that on some days, would build and build, until it exploded into slaps, then maybe punches – to his mother, and sometimes to Haymitch too, especially if he tried to get in the way.

His father at least spared Jackson, although Haymitch had never been sure why. He just knew his father in the last year had started looking at him differently, seeming to think that everything Haymitch said to him was backtalk or meant that he didn't appreciate enough the hard work his father did every day, that he thought he was “somebody bigger than your old man.”

“Your father thinks you've gotten too old for all the mommy stuff,” she tells him now, “and it … it puts him in a bad mood when he sees me hugging you. So I just wanted to remind that we shouldn't do that when he's around, all right? We don't want to upset your father when he's already had a stressful day at work, right?”

“Right, mom.”

There's something hard in her voice that he knows better than to argue with, an undertone that means this is serious, that none of them have any choice about it. She uses the same tone when she sits him and Jackson down with a glass of milk or some berries she's gathered and tells them that there isn't any dinner that night, because she didn't get enough washing work that week.

She doesn't say anything for a while. As she finishes constructing the last pleat on his shirt and pins it down for later sewing, Haymitch notices her wipe at her eyes, then quickly steps back to admire her handiwork.

“I suppose you really are starting to become a man, aren't you?” she says ruefully. “I can't believe you've already turned Reaping age this year ...”

He stands straight and stiff in the back of the shop as Bolt measures him out for pants now. He looks straight ahead, desperate to keep control of his emotions, an aching burning behind his eyes. Bolt, to his credit, never says anything, never even looks up, even though Haymitch is sure a few of his traitorous tears fall on the man's bald head.

Bolt has just finished adding up the totals on a small piece of brown paper when the bell tied to the shop door rings and an older woman's voice tinged with surprise says in the doorway, “Mister Abernathy? Haymitch Abernathy?”

He turns around slowly, vaguely recognizing the voice from his past. “Missus Garvey,” he confirms, not knowing what else to say to his old schoolteacher. He hasn't seen her at all for a year, since his dad signed him out of school and sent him to work in the mines. And it's been a lot longer than that since she was his teacher in sixth grade.

Bolt discreetly leaves his paperwork on the counter and walks off to another area of the shop, as the woman walks up to Haymitch. When she gets close, he is dismayed to see pity in her eyes.

“How have you been, young man?” she asks quietly, taking in the sight of him in his overgrown haircut and his rumpled shirt and trousers. The moniker startles him. He doesn't feel anything like a young man anymore.

“I've been better, Missus Garvey,” he admits, without knowing why. Maybe it's simply because someone's asking him this question for the first time in a long time. Certainly Missus Garvey never asked when he was her student and he came to school with a limp, or with bruises on his cheek – once even with a black eye.

“I'm very sorry about your family,” she says. “After you graduated, I was moved to second grade. I taught Jackson in my last year. He was a very sweet boy.”

Don't cry, don't fucking cry, Haymitch chants in his mind, flashing back to memories of walking Jackson to school on his way to work, teasing him about how best to get Missus Garvey all riled up in a hurry.

“Yeah, unlike me,” he remarks, pursing his lips, daring her to even try and sentimentalize his time with her.

“No, you were not an easy student,” she agrees, pushing a strand of his long, unruly hair out of his face. He jerks at the intimacy of it. What the fuck is she doing, touching him like this? He doesn't want her sympathy or her help, or this pretense that they have a connection. It's far too fucking late for that.

“You weren't particularly studious either,” she continues, letting her hand drop. “You always hid in the back seats whenever you could. I guess you didn't want me to see what your father was doing to you. But you had a clever mind. Your escort picked well with that slogan.”

His eyes widen into circles of barely controlled rage at her frank admission – that she not only had seen but had understood what was happening to him, and that she had never asked questions, never lifted a finger to intervene.

“I saw you in the shop window just now, and I wanted to say that I'm sorry about Jackson, and that I'm sorry I never helped you,” she says. “It's just that you never said anything about it. It seemed like you didn't want me to say anything. And I knew if I told the authorities, you and your brother would have ended up in the Community Home; I didn't think that would be any better, you know? But it's always kind of bothered me that I never did anything.”

He has to make an abrupt, 180-degree turn on his heel, because otherwise, he's sure to shake the very life out of her.

“I know it doesn't make any difference now,” she continues, ignoring his body language, “and well, you're a victor, so I hope you'll have a good life from now on, but I just wanted you to know that in my way, I was trying to help. If I had seen any evidence of what was happening to you back then on little Jackson ...”

He slams his money down on the counter, then turns and blows by her, making a beeline for the door. “I'll be back in a week,” he calls out to the tailor in the back of the shop before she can follow him.

Coming into town had been a mistake.

He makes himself walk all the way home at a normal pace. But when he gets there, shaking with fury, the first thing he does is look for the open wine bottle in the kitchen. He pops the cork and drinks down as much of the red liquid as he can, as fast as he can. When he finally comes up for air, there is only a small line of the stuff left in the bottle, and his shirt is streaked in red rivulets that remind him of the blood spurting out of Maysilee's neck.

He wants more wine. Right now. Because his ears are ringing with the sound of screaming – Maysilee's screaming as the birds gouge her throat; his father roaring curses at him in between punches, his mother and Alsey screaming in fear on the steps of the Justice Hall.

He easily finds and breaks into a new bottle, and drinks most of that down. That's better. Actually it's pretty damn good. Of course, the memories won't go away, no matter how much he drinks; they don't even really hurt less.

But he discovers into the second bottle, that with enough in him, he just doesn't care about anything. But he's also getting more and more dizzy and his gaze is getting harder to focus, and he can feel himself teetering on the edge of passing out. How did his father ever manage to stay upright and conscious enough like this to beat on his family?

He wakes up in the morning, sprawled on his bed in his underwear – his pants and shirt somewhere on the floor. His tongue tastes like a thing not born of this world. As he lies there, staring at the ceiling through slitted eyes, he can feel his heartbeat throbbing in every vein of his body. Each noise permeates his skull like someone taking his forehead and squeezing it impossibly tight. Blindly, he pulls himself up, drags himself towards the sink, turns the tap on full blast. He sticks his face under the cold running water, like he's seen his father do, and now he knows why. The blast of cold gives him the ability to see straight and contemplate his surroundings. His tidied-up household looks like someone opened the window and let in a powerful gust of wind – the mystery of his clothes is solved on the floor of his kitchen; the first, second, then third bottles of wine, are drained and toppled over at different forking points throughout the house, like he's been stumbling around everywhere. He should make himself some eggs on the stove, but he's still a bit wobbly, and he doesn't trust his balance or his energy level to complete the job. He settles for some of Greasy Sae's cold sausage, but after a few bites, he realizes he's just not ready for food.

Alcohol, in a few measured doses, turns out to be the only thing takes away some of the pain. It releases the horrible squeezing sensation in his head, at least, so he can go around picking up the debris of last night. After he's done, he sits at the kitchen table with the empty bottles gathered before him, wondering what the hell to do with himself. Is this going to be his life now? Is he going to drink again when he goes back into town to pick up his clothes? Is he going to drink every time he goes into town? Will it eventually be more and more of this stuff so he can get through the day and to sleep at night? Haymitch remembers vaguely that his father hadn't at first drank during the day. Haymitch's earliest memories are benign ones, of his father sitting in a chair with a bottle of beer in his hand, laughing loudly sometimes at things Haymitch said. It was only later after he lost his job for mouthing off to the foreman one too many times, that he was drinking all day, when he could get his hands on the money for the alcohol.

He wonders now if his father had had a moment like this once, where he made the conscious decision whether or not to become the drunk that Haymitch knows. He quickly shuts down that line of thinking, shows it no mercy, telling himself he's not going to become a walking cliché.

The box of Capitol wine bottles get buried deep in a closet where he can't see them. No more wine, he tells himself, not at night, not at all. Then he draws a steaming bath that he gets lost in for almost an hour, scrubbing every last part of his body. He then drains the tub and scrubs it clean, despite the pounding in his head that getting down on his hands and knees provokes. He refills it with water and soap and throws his clothes in from yesterday, as they smell like sweat and drink, a familiar odor that reminds him that his father often smelled like this.

You've already beaten the odds, you can beat this too, he tells himself. You've won The Hunger Games. Do something with it you can be proud of.

**

The next day, he wakes up knowing what he wants to do.

He goes back to the merchant shops again, this time, bringing with him all the cash from the victor payments the Capitol has been giving him along with his food deliveries. Since he hasn't really been going anywhere up until now, it's accumulated into a pile of money he knows would be hard to spend all in the district. But he's determined to make a real dent into it, so he goes into every one of those shops on the merchant's row that he's never been able to afford and starts buying as much as he can carry – meat and eggs from the butcher, vegetables from the greengrocer, and eggs, flour and other staples in the general store.

“I knew you right away,” says Mr. Jones, the grocer, who sells him white flour and sugar, even oatmeal, which Haymitch had never tried before seeing it in the Capitol; he'd instantly fallen in love with it. “You're the most recognizable face in the district now, Mister Abernathy. I'd dare say even more recognizable than Madam Mayor Undersee.”

He feels a spark of resentment as the man struggles valiantly to make small talk with him, even though they know nothing about each other and have nothing in common. This man would have kicked him out of his store a few months ago. And he certainly wouldn't have called him Mister Abernathy while he did so.

When he's good and overloaded with bags and hasn't even spent one-quarter of the money in his pocket, he goes to the square, not far off from the merchants' row. He decides to sit by a tree with his bags and wait. There are Peacekeepers off in the distance, but they aren't dressed in full gear, just casual black pants and jackets, no helmets. They look fairly lackadaisical about their duties right now, and besides, he's a victor, who brings the food for a year to his district, so he doesn't see a problem with what he's about to do.

He waits until he sees a dark-haired Seam mother and her daughter, who can't be more than four years old, walking by together, hand in hand, probably on their way back from the Hob. The mother is carrying a worn, straw basket in her hand filled with what look like old shoes. She either had just traded something for them, or more likely, had brought them to trade and was turned down. They both have the sunken faces of undernourishment.

“Excuse me, ma'am?” He tries to sound respectful as he approaches her with the bags of food, but she takes a good look at him, then her face turns stricken as she recognizes him. He sees her take a worried glance at the Peacekeepers behind him, then she turns on her heel very deliberately in the other direction.

“Ma'am?” he tries, but he's too intimidated by her response to go chasing after her. He should have remembered: Seam folk balk at charity. She knew what he was about to do, perhaps. He tries again with a tall man who could be his father's age, but the man doesn't even meet Haymitch's eye.

It's not a coincidence. Everyone is definitely avoiding him.

In annoyance, he spots a woman in her sixties, with gray hair and weathered dark skin that looks like brown leather stretched tight over bone. She's wrapped against the cold in a shawl and layers of clothing, and she's obviously infirm and slow. He can at least reach her before she runs off, and besides, she looks like she especially could use the food.

“Excuse me, ma'am, do you know some people who could use these?” he tries a new tack, hoping she'll take her share and distribute the rest to others. “I don't really need them,” he says. “The Capitol sends me food and money regularly, because I'm a victor now, and I thought I could maybe help people out ...”

“I know who you are,” the woman cuts him off quickly with a loud whisper. “You're the boy who got his family killed.” She waves a dismissive hand at his bags. “And I know what you're trying to do. It's all very nice, but you might as well take those things home and eat them yourself, because nobody's going to take your food. They're too afraid.”

He glances at the Peacekeepers, looking as bored as ever and shakes his head in frustration. “Them?” he hisses. “They're not going to do anything! What do they care if I give people food? It's not breaking any laws to give someone food!”

She makes another dismissive gesture at him. “You don't understand anything,” she grumbles, and turns on her way out of the square.

“No, it's you who don't understand anything!” he exclaims, but she doesn't look back, and leaves him along the eastern end of the square holding his bags of food and his smashed pride. He feels like an idiot, but he can see she's right. Everyone is getting out of the square as fast as they can. He takes another glance over at the Peacekeepers, but they still seem to have less than zero interest; if only these people could see that. But he can see now that that's never going to happen. Dejected, he heads out of the square himself, back towards home, swearing under his breath. He finds that he's already staging a battle inside his head over the bottles of wine hidden away from himself back home. The temptation to drink this away grows inside him as he trudges down the dirt path.

After he's been walking for about fifteen minutes or so, he hears the sound of brush being walked upon behind him and to the right. It's light, like someone's trying to spy on him, but he's still got a sensitivity to even the smallest sounds around him that hasn't left him since the arena forced it into him. He whirls around and sees nothing. Surely not Peacekeepers, right? They wouldn't bother hiding.

“Look, whoever you are,” he calls out, “I know you're following me.”

He doesn't expect it to work. If someone's intending to rob the rich victor, they're not going to be drawn out by his taunts. But he can at least intimidate them a little by letting them know he knows, at least until he's figured out what he can grab to defend himself. He puts the bags down and thinks about his options. He can go hand-to-hand if he must, and probably no one from the Seam has a truly impressive weapon; but he'd feel better with something blunt in his hands, at least. “You might as well come out!” he shouts.

A girl who's probably fourteen – but her rail-thin face and long pigtails makes her look about ten – walks out of the brush.

“What the hell are you doing?” His tone is testy and bewildered after his encounters in the square.

“I was walking home and I saw you up ahead with all those groceries,” she says simply, no fear in her voice as she inspects him more closely. “You're the guy who won the Games this year, right?”

Haymitch nods. “Whatdo you want?”

“You live in Victor's Village, right?”

“Yeah, what of it?”

“Can I see what your house looks like?”

He blinks back surprise. “Really? Uh, yeah. Sure, I guess.”

She smiles at him in an open way that vaguely reminds him of Alsey, and he finds himself talking to this girl the way he would talk to Alsey, even though she looks and sounds nothing like her.

“You know, if you wanted to see it, you could have just asked, instead of skulking around in the bushes,” he pretends to grumble.

She shrugs. “I thought you'd tell me to go away.”

His brow furrows with an idea. “Listen, you can see my house on one condition.”

“Okay?”

“You take these bags of groceries back home with you when you leave. And you don't tell who gave them to you. Say you found them on the ground, on the edge of the merchant's row.”

“Why?” Her face screws up with overdone childish confusion.

“Because that's the deal,” he snaps. “You want to see my house, you take home mystery groceries and share them with your family; that's the deal. Got it?”

Her face brightens, almost like she's going to laugh. “Sure,” she says with an inflection that makes clear she thinks he's maybe not so bright. But he doesn't care what a little girl like her thinks, and besides, his mood has just improved tenfold.

He sends her home with all of it after she ogles his house for a while. As she leaves, he makes her promise to send another little friend the next afternoon under a similar shroud of secrecy. He finds he doesn't need that bottle of wine this afternoon after all. He waits until nighttime and does his usual routine of a few drinks before bed, but that's it.

The next day, he goes back into town and buys another round of groceries, sending home the next excited Seam kid with the same promise to send yet another kid. They make a chain of fed families and Haymitch knows that eventually the word will get out – some kid will crack, or just get careless and tell his parents – but he hopes by then that the word will have gotten around and people will see that Peacekeepers aren't doing anything about it, and it's okay to let the victor give you food, you won't be killed for it. It pushes him to go into town each day and talk to people, which he figures is a good thing. He becomes an item of gossip. He can deduce this in the way that the little comments of various shopkeepers begin to overlap, like they've been talking to each other about him. The blonde, pale-skinned merchants who in the past, would have viewed his skinny, dark-haired frame in their shops with suspicion, now grace him with a look of eager anticipation.

Of course, it's still just him and the merchants making awkward small talk, but it's something. It gives him purpose, a dose of normalcy. But after a month, without even a hint of warning, everything changes.

“I'm sorry, but I'm afraid all my stock is spoken for already to orders,” says Jarvis, the greengrocer, after three weeks of Haymitch coming in every weekday in a row. “I won't be able to sell to you this week. Come back next month, though.”

Jarvis has never seemed to be able to sell out his entire stock, but at first, Haymitch doesn't think much of it.

“My deliveries are late,” Darlton tells him at the general store, trying very quickly to busy himself with paperwork of some kind. “Try me in the middle of the month.”

“But I can see you have flour right over there,” he protests with a finger pointing at a barrel. There's an awkward silence. “Oh,” Darlton recovers, badly. “That flour needs to be thrown out; it's gone bad,” he says without looking up.

It goes on the same way, with a lot of flimsy excuses and indirect gazes until Mister Boudreau, the butcher, is remarkably blunt about it.

“They caught on much more quickly this time,” he says.

“What?” Haymitch interjects.

“Ordering Day was two days ago. They charged us all triple the usual price for our supplies,” he explains. “A definite message.”

“The Capitol?” Haymitch asks, bewildered. Boudreau nods.

“Yeah, nobody's going to sell to you for a few weeks, boy. It's obvious the Capitol wants your little spending spree stopped.”

“But,” Haymitch sputters. “I'm not doing anything illegal!”

“Swagger tried this kind of thing in his first year too,” he tells him, “and the Capitol put a stop to it too, but with him, it took a few months before they noticed. They must have been keeping an eye out for it this time.”

Furious, Haymitch stomps all the way back to his house in Victor's Village and makes an immediate path to his closet, tossing everything out behind him in search of the box he's buried far in the back. He doesn't care. He's going to drink that bottle down as fast as he can, and then he's going to find the next one and …

He sticks in hand into the darkness and roots around until his hand finds the familiar long, glass neck, and he yanks out the wine bottle. He slams it down on his kitchen table and examines it – the bottle itself is a blue color one never sees in glass here, except in the decorative glass windows in the Justice Hall. The label is white with baroque gold lettering, with idealized images of the vineyard workers who harvested the grapes to make it. Haymitch stares at these images of brown-skinned workers with contented, glazed-over expressions for a long while.

This is what you think of us. Contented in our mines, surrounded by coal dust. Contented in our slavery.

Eventually, he picks up the bottle and methodically dashes it outside against a large rock in his yard, until the bottle is nothing but tiny shards of glass and dark red liquid staining the dirt. After staring at it a while, he goes and gets another and does the same thing, then repeats with the entire box of wine. He gets rid of it all, not even saving any for his nighttime ritual.

That night the nightmares return with a vengeance: Alsey stands in the square, spitting at the Peacekeepers as they shoot her. His mother haunts him an hour later, looking resigned to her fate. He wakes up for what feels like the thousandth time from Jackson's accusing eyes staring across the square at Haymitch, who is forced to stand on the Reaping dais and watch it all. He wakes up with his heart racing, wide-eyed in the dark.

Fuck it, his brain chants over and over the rest of the night as he lies there, unable to sleep until well into the morning. There's got to be another way. He's survived the terror of the Hunger Games and managed to keep it together, only to be paralyzed ever after by the fear of falling asleep? When is this ever going to go away? He's safe now; why won't his brain process that?

He goes back into town that day, but not to the merchant shops. Instead he buys himself a hunting knife for an exorbitant price in the Hob, one not unlike the knife he slaughtered the Careers with in his Games, in fact. He starts sleeping with it tucked under his pillow at night. It doesn't help the dreams, but it does make him feel safer when he wakes up in the darkness, his fingers curled around the cold handle. That at least gives his brain enough confidence to give in to the exhaustion and eventually fall asleep, though usually not long before dawn.

The wine chased away the dreams in a way the knife doesn't, and he's sorely tempted at times to go buy some. But he doesn't trust the way his mind goes to alcohol so immediately whenever something goes wrong in his life; it reminds him of his father too much.

No, he's gotten rid of the stuff, he tells himself, and that's that.

Go to Chapter 4

Fic: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil (2/11)

millarific — Sun, 22 Dec 2013 16:02:04 GMT

Fic: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil (1/11)

millarific — Sun, 22 Dec 2013 15:52:48 GMT

Title: Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil
Author: millari
Characters: Haymitch Abernathy, Mags, Beetee, Chaff, President Snow, Haymitch's Dad, Haymitch's Girl, OCs
Pairing: Haymitch/Beetee
Rating: R
Beta: The highly awesome and beautiful trovia
Warnings: Implied references to forced prostitution, canonical character deaths
Summary: On his victory tour, Haymitch soon finds out that the real Games have only just begun, and survival means learning to spin out a web of lies, compromises and self-destruction. The Games' oldest living victor and arguably its most intelligent one show him that even in the tainted life of a Victor, there are still ways to prevail.
A/N: This is a finished multi-chaptered work that is posting about once per week.
A/N #2: Despite this icon, Effie and Peeta do not show up in this fic. However, while I was still writing this story, a bunch of promo pictures for Catching Fire came out, and as soon as I saw this, I knew I was going to use it for this fic, because I picture Haymitch and Lucilla looking exactly like this on every stop of Haymitch's Victory Tour. :(

While President Snow takes his sweet time appearing at the Capitol's annual Victory Banquet, fiftieth Hunger Games winner Haymitch Abernathy stands underneath the vaulted ceilings of the President's mansion, feeling hollow and antsy.

The cold, white marble everywhere exudes a majestic purity that to Haymitch feels like a sick joke. Underneath a glittering electric chandelier made of real gold and diamonds, he poses for photographs with sponsors and well-connected fans, while his escort, Lucilla Braithwaite, hovers only one or two steps away, making small talk. She seems to know half the people here, either personally or because they're apparently Capitol celebrities. She's dressed for this unprecedented occasion – a victor from District Twelve – in a long, violet strapless evening gown and a wig of bright canary yellow that Haymitch finds slightly unhinging.

While he is the center of attention here, Haymitch couldn't feel more alone right now, or more exhausted. But these sponsors and fans will be around next year, when he is a mentor instead of a tribute, and so the pressure to be witty and gracious, and above all cocksure – the image he projected for the Games – is daunting. It's not unlike being in the arena again, except here, everyone around him is a Career. It makes him snappish at the least expected moments.

He hopes it passes for the roguish charm. Or something.

As the throng of party guests wanting his attention finally thins out for a while, a wisp of a girl appears before him, as if from out of nowhere, flanked by a Peacekeeper tastefully dressed as much as possible not to look like a Peacekeeper. The guard formally introduces her to Haymitch as President Snow's only daughter.

“I was quite impressed with you in the arena, Haymitch,” Cordelia Snow announces, her childish voice parroting the Capitol poise and absurd accent that has been trained into her all her life, but her ungainly arms thrust out at him in an inexperienced, girlish way, revealing her true age. “You were so brave.”

She is holding a single perfect red rose between her fingers.

“It's from my father's special greenhouse, here in the mansion,” she almost squeaks, and Haymitch quickly catches on that this is a besotted love offering. “I'm only thirteen, so I know we couldn't yet, but would you marry me, Haymitch, when I'm old enough?”

The mix of girlish innocence and clumsy forwardness elicits soft, indulgent chuckles from the sponsors still lingering nearby. Even her Peacekeeper cracks a grin. But all Haymitch can think about as he looks her over is that she's just barely old enough to have faced him in the arena. She could have been one of the faces that have been haunting him ever since he awoke in a hospital a week ago, with a large seam of stitches running across his abdomen.

Except she wasn't, and she never will be, he remembers with a surge of jealous anger. But losing his temper at President Snow's daughter seems even to Haymitch like an unwise idea. His eyes flicker towards Lucilla for guidance on this awkward bit of etiquette. She just shoots him a nervous smile.

He stands there stalling for time by taking the rose the girl has offered him, pretending to examine it. It's almost garish in its perfection, like everything in the Capitol. He wracks his brain for a suitable answer as he bends his head down a little to smell the thing. But one sniff and he jolts back, his heart beginning to race, his entire body rebelling in self-preservation against the aroma that is too reminiscent of the poisonous flowers of his arena. The voices around him – the hyperbolic gasps of excitement and their high-pitched peals of laughter – suddenly sound like the chittering of those bright pink, green and yellow birds that were everywhere in his Games, the ones that killed Maysilee.

He takes a deep breath in and out, to regain control.

“Well, if you watched me with Caesar Flickerman, then you must know that I already have a girl back home,” he finally replies. “I'm afraid I couldn't live with myself if I broke my promise to her.”

He tries to produce an overdone, flirtatious regret that they cannot possibly be a couple, the way he knows Lucilla would do it. The thought of Alsey possibly witnessing this conversation on television makes him slightly ill, and so he's not ready for the girl's startling response:

“Well, my father could execute her.”

Her reply comes almost without pause, without forethought, like it's the most sensible solution in the world. Unlike his, the girl's words contain no irony whatsoever. Lucilla coughs a little, the only evidence that this turn in the conversation is out of the realm of the normal, even for Capitol society, and that it certainly won't be making it onto the television recaps. “Haymitch, have you tried the canapés yet?” she interrupts.

But child or no, President Snow's daughter or no, Haymitch feels the snappishness bubbling up inside him, and he ignores Lucilla's attempt at intervention.

“Listen, sweetheart...” he begins, his attention back on the girl, his tone shifting in a direction he knows will lead nowhere good. But before he can say more, Lucilla has suddenly been afflicted with a much louder, more intrusive cough that startles both teenagers into looking her way. She takes the advantage and wraps a possessive arm around the crook of Haymitch's elbow.

“I'm very sorry, Miss Snow.” Her words are all deference, but there's a steel underneath that he has learned in the past three weeks not to contradict. “Haymitch hasn't yet met Artemis Cantebury, and I can see from here that he has a rare free moment. I really do need to steal this young man away for a few minutes.”

It's enough to bring him to his senses. The girl's eyes narrow into an outraged glare at Lucilla that says she's not used to being thwarted like this, but when it does happen, she's used to making someone pay. For a panicky instant, Haymitch imagines her ordering the Peacekeepers to cart Lucilla off to her own execution; she looks like she might block them from leaving at the very least. But thankfully, Cordelia Snow's personal Peacekeeper steps in, just as the girl is on the verge of speech.

“I'm afraid I've just received word from your father's attendants, Miss Snow.” He touches an invisible earpiece. “He's about to come downstairs. You really should be in line to receive him.”

She sighs loudly, but is forced to concede. “I hope you enjoy the rose,” she tells Haymitch with a perfectly awful Capitol smile, and he can no longer manufacture one back for her. But he does manage to nod and bring the sickly sweet thing back up to his nose and hold it there, as if appreciating it. As soon as Lucilla turns his body in the opposite direction, he lets his hand fall to his side and exhales in relief, glad to have it as far away from himself as possible.

“Thanks,” he murmurs at Lucilla as they walk off.

“Don't lose that thing.” Lucilla cocks her head and whispers in his ear, as if she's telling him about a trifling bit of gossip. “In fact, you'd better wear it on your lapel. I'll see what I can do about finding a pin here once I leave you to chat with Cantebury.”

“I don't want to wear it,” Haymitch mutters. “It smells bad, and that girl is twisted.”

Already facing forward again, Lucilla pulls him along more aggressively, murmuring so just Haymitch can hear: “You'll wear it with a smile,” she orders. “Snow absolutely dotes on his daughter; it wouldn't do to insult her. He gives her nearly anything she wants.”

“What, including me?” he retorts.

“Don't be ludicrous,” she murmurs back, her tone commanding him: “and keep your voice down. You're a victor, but you're not untouchable, you know.”

She stops near the group of Gamemakers Haymitch remembers watching him during Training Week and positions herself before Haymitch, using the pretense of adjusting his tie. “And you needn't worry about little Miss Snow.”

“She just offered to have my girl executed!” But he keeps his voice down like she's ordered.

Lucilla rolls her eyes. “She's thirteen. And I'm sure she had a crush on last year's victor too. Now, you're attractive and charming in a certain … determined way for someone coming from such a backward district. But you're hardly Snow's idea of son-in-law material, so I really wouldn't worry about it. Still, there's absolutely no point in doing anything to call negative attention to yourself, is there?”

She's right, and it's annoying, so Haymitch is reduced to twisting the rose's stem back and forth in twitchy anger as Lucilla more or less shoves him in front of the Head Gamesmaker, Artemis Cantebury, a man who looks to be in his forties – which probably means he's in his fifties, Haymitch thinks. The man is tall and thin with a beard that's dyed a brilliant aqua color.

“Artemis!” she exclaims in that overdone way everyone at this party seems to have. “I must congratulate you on an unparalleled arena this year! You have clearly outdone yourself!”

Haymitch watches the two of them lean in to kiss each other on both cheeks. “Thank you, Lucilla. You're looking well.” His voice is just slightly thick with drink as he pulls back and visibly observes Haymitch standing there. “It's the young man of the hour!” he booms.

Lucilla beams. “Artemis,” she says formally, “I'm so pleased and proud to present to you your newest victor, Haymitch Abernathy of District Twelve.”

Cantebury takes Haymitch's hand and gives it a squeeze, saying, “Pleased to meet you, Haymitch. Very creative win.”

But before Haymitch can thank him, the recorded fanfare of the President begins blaring out of invisible speakers in the ceiling and Cantebury goes silent, his gaze flying off Haymitch as he moves closer towards the marble staircase at the far end of the ballroom. President Snow, the tall, thin man with paper-white hair whose slight appearance nevertheless commands the gazes of the entire room, appears at the top of the wide, majestic staircase, which is adorned on either side with several thick bushes in pots. Each contains the same kind of roses Haymitch is holding in his hand.

The multitude of thick, red flowers in such close proximity to each other makes Haymitch think of two symmetrical waves of blood spilling on either side of Snow, flowing alongside him as he descends the staircase. For a terrible moment, the fanfare around them morphs in Haymitch's ears into the trumpets of the Games, and he has to stop himself from looking up into the sky for announcements of newly-dead tributes.

“Every year I see him, I never get over the fact of how small he is,” Lucilla breathes, watching Snow with a touch of awe in her voice. “And he's so brave to let himself go gray like that too.”

He knows he should leave it alone, but somehow he can't. “So brave that he sends children into the arena each year to kill each other for his entertainment,” he snipes under his breath.

Lucilla's eyes widen and her breatheless excitement immediately collapses into an ugly scowl. She places a firm hand on his shoulder and squeezes hard, capturing his gaze and refusing to let it go.

“Do you want to be the first victor in history to be arrested for treason?” she hisses at him. “Because that's exactly the sort of thing a remark like that leads to.”

He just gapes at her, all the sarcasm falling away as he becomes aware of the streak of buried panic suddenly in her voice.

“And if you don't care about yourself,” she goes in for the kill, “then at least think of how every single one of your actions reflect upon me.” She stares him down until chastened, he nods in spooked acquiescence and Lucilla turns them both to watch Snow, who has arrived at the bottom of the stairs. The President of Panem showers the crowd with a benevolent smile, then take his daughter's hand as he is enveloped into the mass of people with the regal air of a monarch.

“So!” Artemis Cantebury returns once the moment is over, his booming voice preceding him even as the smatterings of crowd chatter have crescendoed back up to normal levels. There is an amused twinkle in his eye. “I finally get to actually talk to the clever Haymitch Abernathy, the tribute who beat my game!”

“Oh yes!” Lucilla exclaims with what Haymitch realizes a second later is an exhalation of relief. “He's awfully clever, isn't he? To have won the Games without the benefit of a mentor to guide him on strategy! I could help him with the interviews and his overall image, but I must admit I wasn't much use once it came time for the arena.”

She neglects to mention that Haymitch didn't have a mentor because the one that he and Maysilee were supposed to have killed himself the night before Reaping Day.

“That's not what I heard, Lucilla,” Cantebury chuckles. “I heard you were quite the force to be reckoned with amongst the sponsors. But yes, he was quite the topic of discussion in Gamesmakers' HQ. He kept us scrambling.” He gives Haymitch an indulgent wink. “Very clever boy.”

“Indeed.”

Haymitch nearly jumps at the feel of a hand falling like deadweight onto the back of his shoulder. He turns to find himself face to face with President Snow. “Most clever.”

The man's smile is gracious, but it does not reach his eyes – which unlike Cantebury's, show no spark of indulgence. “And you know what clever boys get,” he says in a low, rumbling voice.

Haymitch just stares at him, their faces too close together for his comfort. No, I don't know, he wants to say. What do they get? But something won't let him get the words out, and then the moment's gone anyway. A tall woman wearing pink wings and speaking in elongated Capitol vowels like Lucilla has already grabbed Snow's attention, and just like that, he's gone.

Once again, Haymitch is reminded of just how much he can't wait to get home. At least back home, people behave like people, he thinks, and the expectations are clear.

**

Sixteen-year-old Haymitch is not old enough to have actually experienced the return of a triumphant victor to District Twelve. But he's pretty sure it's not supposed to go like this.

Pausing to gaze out of one of the last windows on the train car before they exit, Haymitch frowns at what he sees: A crowd has gathered near the train platform to greet their arrival, as they're required to, just like when the victors come through here on their victory tours, but their stony expressions are not what he had expected. This should be a day of genuine celebration, shouldn't it? One of their own has returned from the meat grinder alive, a giant fuck you to the Capitol and the Career system the Capitol quietly let happen, ensuring that a win like Haymitch's is almost impossible. But instead, he sees dead eyes everywhere, the Peacekeepers standing behind everyone, guns at the ready, like they expect violence. The spectators definitely look like they're not here by choice.

What is going on?

Could his victory in the arena have inspired some kind of mini-rebellion at home, he wonders? Have the citizens of District Twelve been fighting back against the Peacekeepers since his victory? It seems inconceiveable, but a crackdown would explain the behavior of both the Peacekeepers and the people in this crowd. Still, who would want to jeopardize the extra food rations Haymitch's victory would be bringing here soon? It doesn't make sense.

And anyway, rebellion is not what he's reading in the sullen faces of the crowd. The people here look more like they're attending a funeral.

“You'd think they'd be a bit more animated to have you back,” Lucilla remarks uneasily, straightening her wig in one of the windows before stepping toward the door.

“Well, I wasn't the most popular person here before I left,” he half-explains. Perhaps he shouldn't have expected that to change.

Lucilla shakes her head, careful to not let the wig move too much. “But you're a victor!” she cries in disbelief, then peers out the window again at the crowd, clearly thinking them a conundrum.

“Please don't take offense at this, Haymitch.” Her face in the window reflecting back in dark shadow looks disgusted. “I have really enjoyed you being my tribute this year. But in all honesty, I'll be glad once I get a district with a little more … spirit.”

Haymitch resists the urge to mention how she used to complain that he'd drive her to an early grave, or how it's hard to have spirit when you're starving. Instead, he contents himself with a roll of his eyes, because well, it doesn't do any good to talk to Lucilla about these things, and as annoying as she often is, she did step in and learn in a hurry how to get him sponsors when the man who would have normally done that for him and Maysilee, Swagger March, had offed himself the night before the Reaping.

Haymitch still seethes to think about the man and how full of shit he was. Every year, when he brought their tributes home, he’d give a little speech about how he’d tried to bring one of them home alive, and how next year was going to be different. Next year, always next year. And yet, after all those empty promises, it had only taken a vain, ambitious Capitol woman to close the deal. What an incompetent ass that man had been.

Lucilla, to her credit, had been the one who had taken a look at her two tributes and told them it wasn’t fair of their mentor to leave them in the lurch like that.

“Swagger may have given up, but I wasn’t raised to be a quitter,” she’d told Haymitch and Maysilee with such a ridiculous sense of her own gravitas that Haymitch hadn’t taken it seriously at first. “I won’t let you down.”

But indeed, she had gotten him through it. She was the one who had encouraged him to reshape his anger at being abandoned, at his typical horrible luck at being picked for the Games, at life in general, into a devil-may-care sarcasm and a roguish confidence that would unsettle other players and charm sponsors. She was right: The sponsors had eaten it up. As much as he hates to admit it, she probably saved his life.

Much like she had in Snow's mansion, Lucilla now grabs the crook of his elbow and pulls him out onto the threshold so the people of District Twelve can see them standing on the steps to the train car. The determination in her stance belies all the damning evidence before her.

“Ladies and gentlemen of District Twelve!” she announces in a loud, formal voice. “I give you your victor of the fiftieth Hunger Games – Haymitch Abernathy!”

Silence. Awful silence. There isn't even the usual polite patter of applause that District Twelve reserves for the Victory Tour appearances. There's nothing but silent stares.

Haymitch has always been kind of an outcast in his own community, thanks to his father's reputation and his own tendency to not to hold his tongue around stupid adults; but mostly people just leave him alone, very alone. He has rarely provoked this kind of passive-aggressive anger.

“They should have at least put up a welcome banner or something,” Lucilla admonishes with a whisper. “It's a good thing the cameras don't come for this part.”

Killer, a voice hisses loudly from somewhere in the middle of the crowd, causing Lucilla to jerk her head toward the sound. Her eyes search the crowd accusingly.

Whoever it was, Haymitch knows they only dared because it would be impossible to identify the source. But the taunt leaves him confused. Of course he's a killer, but they all knew that, knew that was what they were sending him to become. And it's not like he had to kill anyone from his district. So why should they care? What are they angry about?

It doesn't make sense.

Lucilla guides him down the train's metal steps and onto the platform. Harlan Whitehead, Head Peacekeeper for District Twelve, an aging bull of a man whose body is slowly turning to fat at about the same pace as his hair is turning gray, walks up to greet them in silence. Behind him is his sargeant, whose name Haymitch can't remember anymore, because everyone secretly refers to him as “Crates” for his tendency to pilfer from the crates of tesserae deliveries.

Crates, with his usual bored demeanor, doesn't bother with any greetings, but Haymitch is surprised at how Harlan seems to be deliberately avoiding Haymitch's gaze – surprising because the last time Haymitch saw him was moments after he had been reaped, when Harlan had escorted him into the Justice Hall and grunted out some words about how he'd look out for Haymitch's family, giving Haymitch no time to thank him or even respond before he walked out and left Haymitch to say goodbye to his mom and Jackson.

Seeing Harlan again when he never expected to, Haymitch tries defiantly to capture his gaze, to try and get some sense of why this is happening, but it's clear that the man is refusing to engage.

This is all wrong, he thinks, but the explanation is a mystery.

“Where's your family?” Lucilla whispers as they are moved through the crowd to the dais.

The unexpected tenor of this homecoming has taken Haymitch so by surprise that this question hasn't occurred to him until now. He scans the crowd of blank faces, a knot of unease forming in his stomach.

“I don't know,” he murmurs. “They should be here.” At least his mother and Jackson should be. His father showing up anywhere he's supposed to is always a fifty-fifty gamble, and him showing up sober is a hundred-percent guaranteed losing bet. Alsey should be here too. She had told him when he'd left that she was his girl and so she'd wait for him. Unlike Haymitch, she'd refused to believe that he wouldn't survive.

The guards have made way for them through the entire crowd. He and Lucilla walk up to the dais where this all started less than a month ago, and Haymitch notices that there are a mere three seats up there, one for him, one for Lucilla and one for the Mayor. It's as if they all knew very well that his parents wouldn't be making an appearance here. Haymitch hunches a little, as his sense of unease grows. But right now, there is nothing he can do. He is trapped in the official formalities of a victor's homecoming.

However, once they're up onstage, it becomes clear that Lucilla can't wait to get out of there. As the spectators continue not to clap at the usual places, anxiety begins to carve into the edges of her eternally sunny disposition. She plays the video from the Capitol that lays out to the district in Snow's smug baritone and flowery language exactly which rewards they will be reaping on account of Haymitch's victory.

“The Capitol is generous to those who bring pride and honor to the nation. Mother Panem feeds her children who love her back,” his recorded voice concludes, accompanied by images of lush green meadows and fertile wheat fields that don't exist in Twelve. After the video ends, the crowd looks distinctly unconvinced, and Haymitch can tell from the way her facial muscles twitch and her hand clenches onto the podium that even Lucilla can see it. At his Reaping, she had spent a couple of minutes happily adding off-the-cuff editorial comments about the video and about the glory of the Games in general. But now, she seems to snap this ceremony into high speed. She practically shoves the oversized ceremonial bag of money, the first monthly installment of Haymitch's lifetime winnings, into the Mayor's hands. When she gives Haymitch his speech, he notices that she has given him only two index cards to read, not the three he remembers seeing on the train.

He's glad it's short though, because the way the crowd's acting, and the absence of everyone he expected to be here is causing disturbing scenarios to unravel in his mind. The most likely one is his father going on another bender and beating up his mom too badly for her to be here. He tries to tamp down the rage this image provokes by reminding himself that he's got a new home in Victor's Village to bring his mother and brother to now, and that the second the Peacekeepers turn over the keys, he's going to take her and Jackson out of his father's house forever.

But if that's what has happened, that still doesn't explain why isn't Alsey here, does it? Is she at his house caring for his mom?

“Do you want me to bring you to your house?” Lucilla asks when the ceremony ends and the Peacekeepers are dispersing the crowds out of the square. But everything about her demeanor says she'd rather not, and Haymitch doesn't want her to see whatever has happened at his house either, so he eagerly lets her go.

“Nah. I'll be fine, Lucilla. Really,” he says. “Thanks for everything.”

Lucilla rewards him with a smile of warm gratitude he can tell is genuine, then surprises him with a quick peck on the forehead before he can duck out of it. “All right then. I'll finally meet your family when I come back in six months for the Victory Tour,” she declares. “The Peacekeepers will come to your house tomorrow to escort you to your new luxurious home.

“I do wish I could be there to see your face when you see it for the first time,” she sighs, despite her subdued mood. “But when I return to get you ready for your Victory Tour, I expect you to throw me a dinner befitting your new status, understood?”

“Sure,” he huffs, impatient for her to leave.

“You take care of yourself, clever Haymitch,” she says with a fond air. “I look forward to seeing you in six months.”

“Me too, Lucilla,” he replies. But he doesn't look forward to seeing her in six months, because that will mean it's time for his Victory Tour, where he'll be forced to dance for the Capitol yet again, and where people who have lost their children will be forced to clap for him. But he's going to end up seeing her again now, and then again and again, year after year, so he better get used to working with her. And in a weird way, the stories Lucilla tells herself about him remind him a bit of his mom, who weaves his father's violent, drunken behavior into a story about just how much he loves them, even though that makes no damn sense when you consider the facts.

The reminder of his mother gets him moving quickly on the half-mile walk from the square to his family's home. When he imagines mom in bed, unable to get up, Alsey bent over her in concern, he does the last quarter-mile or so at a frantic run.

The house is ominously dark when he arrives. No smoke coming from the chimney either. Odd. While it's still September, and not yet cold enough to warrant a fire for heat, his mother should have a cooking fire going at this time of day, especially now that they don't have to worry ever again about conserving their supply of wood.

He bursts in through the wooden front door, which empties right into the kitchen. Because of that, he's used to associating entering his house with the aromas of food cooking. In fact, right about now he should be overwhelmed by the aromas of a victory meal, shouldn't he?

He flies through the house now, looking for signs of life, but there's none, except for the random liquor bottle left here and there throughout and the small pile of dishes in the sink that look like they've been sitting there for days. By contrast, his and Jackson's bedroom looks as neat and tidy as the day he left it a month ago – Jackson's stuffed bear sitting jauntily atop his neatly-made bed. His own second-best shirt and trousers is carefully laid out on his bed, as if in anticipation of a celebration.

Did she finally leave the bastard? Maybe knowing that Haymitch would be given a new home in Victor's Village finally had given her the courage to leave and take Jackson. Maybe Harlan Whitehead let them into his new Victor's home early and they're already living there. He would probably do that for them, to protect them from his father, who must have already figured out that there was no way his son was going to let him move in with them.

But Jackson would never leave without his favorite toys. He notices again the knot of unease from earlier in the pit of his stomach.

He walks much more slowly now to the last room in the house he hasn't checked – his parents' bedroom. The door is a tiny sliver ajar, and Haymitch pushes it open slowly, beginning to wish that this could all be a good-natured prank, that his whole family is hiding inside, waiting to surprise him with a party in his honor. But nothing so far about his arrival today in District Twelve has suggested this.

A wave of relief washes over him at the sight of his father sprawled out on the bed, asleep. It's a feeling that quickly dissipates once he realizes that Randall Abernathy, whose dark curls sticking to his forehead are the blueprint for Haymitch's, is actually passed out drunk. < i>No change there</i>, Haymitch thinks.

The rest of his family is nowhere to be found. Haymitch picks up his father's heavy arm and shakes it a bit, but it's no good: he's too far gone. So he hunts around the kitchen for a pitcher and fills it with water from the house cistern, then uses all his strength to haul his father's dead weight off the bed and onto the floor. No reason his mother should have to sleep in a soaked bed.

The cold water dumped on his head finally sparks Randall to life, sputtering and cursing his way into consciousness. He is wild-eyed and ready to strike out, but Haymitch is ready for this, and keeps his distance, having learned from past experience the consequences of this little trick. When his father is finally able to focus, he makes the predictable lunge for Haymitch's feet and misses by a good distance.

“Thanks for the welcome home, Dad,” he mutters, then gets down to real business. “Where'd Ma and Jackson go?”

His father pulls himself up so that he's sitting on the floor. He doesn't even remark on the fact that he is soaked, yet Haymitch still stands ready to dodge or run if necessary. But Randall doesn't make any more moves for his son; he just stares at him in wide-eyed shock. “Do you mean they didn't tell you?” he roars, then quiets down, muttering to himself. “What the hell was the point, then?”

The knot in Haymitch's stomach twists. “Who didn't tell me? Tell me what?”

When Randall gets to his feet, he's definitely swaying. He stumbles around in place a bit until he wipes his face with the first thing he finds – an embroidered doily that his mom treasures as a heirloom that's been in her family since before the Dark Days. Watching him defile this precious piece of fabric without a second thought sends a chill down Haymitch's spine. Ma's not here anymore, he realizes.

And she left these things behind.

“Tell me what, Dad?” he demands, a tremble in his voice.

Randall flings the sopping rag away, and it lands carelessly on the floor. “She's dead,” he intones. “They're dead. Her and Jackson.” His foot kicks over a half-empty bottle of whisky on the floor by the bed, and it begins to spill its contents on the floor, but Randall swipes it back up into his hand to save it. He takes a swig, then carefully places it on the night table. Haymitch's feet have fallen out from under him, and he finds himself sitting on the bed, not sure how he got there. “Dead?” His voice is a hollow echo. This isn't possible. He's won the Hunger Games. He's a victor. Nothing can touch him now. Not even death, which he beat in the arena. Forty-seven times.

“How?” he chokes out.

“Peacekeepers came in the middle of the day, two weeks ago,” Randall continues in the same monotone. “They didn't explain nothing, just took your Ma and Jackson away. An hour later, Peacekeepers shot 'em both in the square, made everyone in town stand there and watch.”

He grabs the bottle again, takes a swig, and this time, hangs onto it, clutching it by the neck next to his hip.

“But...” is all Haymitch can manage at first. His father is drunk, but it's Haymitch who feels like the room is spinning. His brain is working at a crawl right now. All he can think about is how Jackson wanted to be a Peacekeeper himself one day, despite Haymitch constantly telling him to shut up about it, that Peacekeepers were bad people. He must have been so confused and scared when his idols had turned on him.

What could make anyone think that a housewife and her young son could deserve execution?

“But Harlan knows us!” he cries. “He liked us! Why did he do this?” He suddenly remembers how the Head Peacekeeper wouldn't look him in the eye today.

“He liked you and Jackson,” his father corrects, then adds with a long-held and paranoid bitterness. “And he was after your mother.”

This isn't really true. Harlan Whitehead, Head Peacekeeper, clearly wasn’t after Katherine Abernathy, because Capitol knew he had been out at the Abernathy home enough times over the years whenever neighbors filed noise complaints, which everyone in the Seam knew was code for, “we're worried he's going to kill her, but we don't poke our noses in other folks' business.” And while his mom would never press charges against her husband, if Harlan had really wanted to steal her away, all he would have had to do was provoke Randall when he was in one of his drunken rages, and then “unavoidably” shoot him while on duty. But it was obvious that Harlan only felt bad for Randall's family, and had especially liked Jackson, though had never interfered, other than to warn Randall off hitting his family, or to sometimes take him into “protective custody” overnight.

How could he have possibly gone through with executing Jackson?

“Anyway, Harlan didn't do it himself,” his father grunts. “They brought in special Peacekeepers from the Capitol. They probably didn't trust him to go through with it.”

“But I don't understand. They must have given you some reason when they took them,” Haymitch sputters, although he suspects that his brain already knows the answer and is not letting him find it. For some reason, he keeps hearing Lucilla's little sigh of relief at the Victory Banquet.

The bottle goes flying in a fury towards Haymitch, but the years of living with his father has sharpened his senses and he ducks just in time as the thing shatters against the wall behind him, and alcohol begins to flood the bed sheets.

“They didn't need to! Isn't it obvious? It was your fault, clever Haymitch.” He uses the catchphrase Lucilla got Flickerman and the other journalists repeating over and over during the Games, with a mocking, piss-poor imitation of the Capitol accent.

Haymitch's eyes narrow. “What are you talking about?”

“That stunt you pulled in the arena! You made them look stupid! What, you thought they would just let that go?”

Haymitch freezes. No, no, no. Can't be. They wouldn't. Not to a victor.. His mind rails at the simple logic his father has offered, preferring to exchange it with memories of Cantebury's joviality and the wink he gave Haymitch at the Victory Banquet. Haymitch had shown up his creation, and he hadn't been upset at all.

But the illusion falls apart the moment his brain retrieves the adjacent memory of President Snow: You know what clever boys get.

He jumps up in one wordless motion. He feels like he's suffocating.

“They got your girl too,” Randall shrugs. “Alsey, right? They shot her right next to your mother and Jackson.”

“But she didn't have anything to do with anything!” he sputters. Alsey has always been the kindest person in all of District Twelve, who would never hurt anyone, who can see the good in all people, even Haymitch.

“Doesn't matter. She was your girl, or so you two said in all those interviews. Not like you ever bothered to tell me about her.”

I never told you about her because I didn't want you ruining it, like you ruin everything, Haymitch thinks with an inward snarl.

“All those interviews they did with her,” Randall says. “Her all starry-eyed and hopeful when you started winning, telling those journalists how you two were planning on going behind your parents' backs for a toasting if you came home alive.” When Haymitch says nothing, Randall's breath comes out in a bitter huffing sound. “It was everywhere on the damn viewscreens around here, all the damn time, the further you got. Of course they shot her.”

Pain stabs through his temple. He had only made Alsey more of a target by talking about her in his interviews, on Lucilla's guidance. The sponsors will positively eat up a tragic love story, she'd promised.

How could Alsey be gone just like that? How could his mother and Jackson be gone? He won.

Paralysis quickly gives over to boiling rage, in desperate need of a target, and he realizes that he has never felt less afraid of his father in all his life.

Before Randall can react, Haymitch is on him with the force of a Capitol train. He isn't strong enough under normal conditions to hit his father the way the man beats on Haymitch, but Randall is still in the ebbing throes of what must have been a several-days bender; he goes down easily.

Once on the floor, though, Randall regains the weight advantage and soon manages to roll the two of them over, pinning Haymitch's arms to the floor above his head. Haymitch turns away from the thick layer of fermented liquor on his breath, barely containing his gag reflex.

“What did you say?” he shouts at the useless bastard, who if the universe had any justice at all, wouldn't be alive right now. “Tell me what you said to them!”

Randall snorts, still pinning down his son's arms. “What are you talking about?”

Haymitch makes a futile struggle to break free. “Why didn't they kill you? You must have said something that convinced them not to take you too!”

“I didn't say nothing, clever boy. They just didn't want me, that's all.”

“Liar!” he screams at him, and takes the only shot he can with his arms pinned. He pushes upward as furiously as he can and manages to butt their foreheads together, hard. It hurts like hell, but it's worth the surprise on the man's face and the yelp of pain. The shock of it jerks Randall back, and it's just enough leverage to allow Haymitch to knee him in the groin. Randall lets go immediately and rolls off, caught up in a new and all-consuming world of pain.

“It's so typical of you to let them take Ma and Jackson and sweet-talk your way out of it,” he hisses, jumping to his feet in a fighting stance. “Just like you sweet-talked your way out of her leaving you every time she thought about it. Every time I almost had her convinced.”

At first, his father says nothing, too lost in his own pain, but eventually he manages, his voice hoarse with pain and anger, “Don't try to pin this on me, boy. I'm not the one around here everyone calls 'killer'. I'm not the one who messed with Snow's precious arena.” To Haymitch's shock, his father's voice chokes with what sounds like the threat of tears.

“Oh what?” Haymitch snarls at him in disgust. “You gonna cry now? Little late for that, huh? Maybe you should have felt sad when you were beating the shit out of her all the time!”

“Fuck you.” Randall's voice has already hardened again, perhaps recognizing the echo of his own stock phrases coming out of his son's mouth. “Fuck you, killer. You took my wife and the only son I care about.”

“I hate you!” Haymitch shouts, then spits on the ground next to his father's curled-up body. “I wish you were dead!”

“You'd like that, wouldn't you?” Randall retorts with a harsh laugh. “Well, you're out of luck, sweetheart. The Capitol only takes away the ones we love. Now get the fuck out of my house.”

Haymitch has to resist kicking him in the head with his new sponsor-donated steel-toed boots. At the last second, he tells himself he won't have yet another death on his hands, not even this man. So he turns around and kicks the nearest wall instead, as hard as he can. He walks towards the bedroom he shares with Jackson and begins throwing whatever random bits of his clothes and items he can find quickly into his old school satchel, bellowing, “I don't need you anymore!” into the hallway.

He exits the bedroom with the pack on his back and Jackson's stuffed bear clutched in his left hand as tight as a vise. He'll go to Alsey's parents' house until tomorrow. At least they give a fuck about him.

As he walks past the door to his parents' bedroom, Randall is still not up, but has managed to support himself upright with one palm flat on the floor, coughing.

“Don't ever think about coming back,” he threatens as Haymitch's hand is already on the front door knob.

“Just so you know,” Haymitch replies without turning around, his adrenaline fading fast, and his voice already sounding dead to his own ears, “if I ever come back here, it'll be to end you.”

With his father's labored breath still lingering in his ears, Haymitch walks out, closing the door on that relationship forever.

To chapter 2

Fic: Reinventing Gaius Baltar (Baltar, Helo, Boomer - G)

millarific — Sun, 20 Oct 2013 23:11:18 GMT

Title: Reinventing Gaius Baltar
Author: millari
Characters: Gaius Baltar, Sharon Valerii, Karl 'Helo' Agathon
Rating: G
Beta: Thank you, as always, the lovely trovia!
Summary: Fate has never given Gaius anything, other than a brilliant mind.
A/N: Written for Inspiration Day at bsg_epics. The prompt was to write about the moment in the Miniseries when Gaius considers betraying an old woman's trust and stealing her place on the last Raptor off Caprica.

“23...”
“12...”
“36...”

The young military pilot calls out the numbers with a slight tremble in her voice, in an accent that Gaius is just about absolutely sure is an Aerelon one, covered over with something vaguely Piconese.

Frak. The world as he knows it is ending – he can see the godsdamn mushroom cloud still hanging in the air off in the distance. The Twelve Worlds are soon going to be nothing but irradiated cinders, and whether or not Gaius lives or dies right now depends on a random lottery, conducted by a jumped-up Aerelonian who like him, is hiding her origins.

Just perfect.

Fate has never given Gaius anything, other than a brilliant mind. All his other achievements and luxuries, up until three hours ago, were gained through his own ambition, hard work and cunning. Gaius has guided the paths of atoms, for frak's sake. And now somehow, none of that counts. Fate gave him a good fifteen years, but then inevitably kicked him in the teeth again, and has now left him standing here in this overgrown field, his only chance at survival left a simple probability problem over which he has zero control.

“Excuse me,” an old woman next to him with long, tangled strands of gray hair interrupts his rambling thoughts. “I must have left my glasses somewhere. Could you please read this for me?”

She is waving the scrap of paper given to her by the young Aerelonian pilot's companion, a beefy military man gleaming with a sense of his own right to lead. Gaius had found his demeanor in this terrifying, humbling situation simultaneously comforting and grating.

“127,” the young pilot calls out. Her tone and accent are distractingly reminiscent of his sisters, and he swallows down sudden, guilty nausea, it occurring to him for the first time that Aerelon must be in a similar state of destruction right now. A woman in front of Gaius then mutters, “thank the Lords of Kobol,” as she steps forward, her voice sounding both grateful and yet also dead.

“I seem to have misplaced them,” the old woman repeats, her nattering at Gaius, ripping him away from his musings. He looks at her again, confused, then remembers the piece of paper she has shoved into his hands. His eyes drift upward, widening as he notices the missing glasses sitting absentmindedly atop her head. His grandmother used to pull the same trick when he was a boy.

“They're on your head, Gran,” he'd tell her, rolling his eyes with overdone childish annoyance. “You don't need me to read that for you.”

“Oh, you read it anyway,” she'd say. “You've got it in your hands already, and I like hearing your voice.”

“Last one,” the girlish pilot's voice drifts over the crowd. The old woman is now the tapping the piece of paper into his hands, just like his gran would do with a book, and in a familiar way, he finally reads the number, feeling slightly harried. "47," the pilot announces with an air of finality.

His heart stops a beat and he reads the old woman's scrap of paper again. His gaze flies up at her, gaping.

She is going to live.

The terrible opportunity presented before him paralyzes him with seconds of indecision. Dare he do it? Could he dissolve into the small crowd of zombies boarding this tiny Raptor and leave her here to die? Could he live with that?

She is old; she will die soon anyway. He is still young, a scientist, the preeminent scientist of his generation across the Twelve Worlds. Humanity, if it survives this, will need his knowledge, to carry on, to rebuild. Besides, he thinks, tightly clutching his briefcase – the one thing he brought with him here besides the clothes on his back – he can't die yet, not until he knows how the Cylon woman fooled him, how she destroyed everything.

But he can't move, can't speak, can only stare at those glasses atop her head. Do it, his brain hisses at him, sounding a little like the Cylon he thought was his girlfriend for two years. What are you waiting for?

Before he can act, the righteous male pilot's voice booms in his ears, and he is distracted again, this time by the tone of accusation he hears there.

“Hey!”

Panic overtakes him. They know? Already?

He looks forward and sees the man staring him down, pointing a determined finger at him: “Aren't you Gaius Baltar?”

There is a single, agonizing millisecond, where Gaius just stares back at him, thinking it may be the last moment of freedom he enjoys in his soon-to-be-ending life. They are going to take him into custody and execute him, that is, if the soldier doesn't just shoot him now, or the crowd doesn't tear him apart once they find out why the soldier has called him out.

“Yeah, I haven't done anything!” he yelps, before he has a chance to process the look of confusion on the man's face. All his budding, desperate thoughts of palming the woman's scrap of paper and giving her back his own are jumbled in his head now, a bubbling mix of shame and panic, and he just reacts, falls back onto the persona he knows people find charming.

“This lady has ticket number 47!” he cries out more loudly than necessary, compensating for the confidence his voice doesn't yet feel. “This lovely lady here!” He holds the paper up higher, as if to prove that he had no intention of doing anything untoward with it. He hears the jealous, anguished cries of disappointed others around him.

But the soldier ignores his pleas, beckoning him closer with an assured wave of his fingers: “Could you come up here, please?” he asks, and it isn’t a request.

“Yeah, of course,” Gaius barely manages to choke out, even as years of well-honed instincts to be polite, to ingratiate himself with others kicks in. “Excuse me, please,” he whispers to the people around him as he forces his leaden feet to move forward and takes the old woman's arm to pull her along with him. “Sorry,” he says to no one in particular.

But when he gets up closer, the solider is ignoring him, caught up in a mumbling conversation with the Aerelonian pilot. Through the sheen of his own terror, he can just barely see the strife in their faces, and it dawns on him that they are not talking about what to do with him, but are arguing about something more deeply personal. He could still run. They wouldn't notice at first, and the people around him probably wouldn't have time to react. Or maybe they wouldn't even care. At this point, all they care about is getting onto that Raptor. They'd be glad he was gone – one less competitor.

But he doesn't do any of that. He's not sure why, but he keeps walking forward, swearing he can feel all hope dissipating out of him with every single one of his companion's uncertain steps forward. When they reach the front of the crowd, the female pilot's gaze flickers over towards him for just a moment, with a pain that stops Gaius in his tracks.

“Give me one reason why I'm a better choice than one of the greatest minds of our time,” he hears the male pilot murmur to her. “You can do this without me,” he insists. “I know you can, you’ve proven it.”

He takes a deliberate step away from her, his body language telling Gaius what has just transpired. When she meets Gaius’ gaze again, there are daggers there.

“Get on board,” she cries, jerking towards the Raptor behind her with her thumb. Gaius doesn't need any more encouragement. His body jolts instantly forward at her command and he clambers onto the Raptor's wing. People help the old woman on board as he turns and takes one last look at the crowd he is leaving behind. They are already making loud protests, already pressing forward in an angry mob. The beefy soldier holds them back with arms extended wide in front of him, warning his partner, “I think you'd better go.”

All these people, Gaius thinks, as he looks out into that crowd. They are going to die here, and I am going to live. How did that even happen?

Fate has never given Gaius Baltar anything, other than a brilliant mind.

And now possibly a hallucinatory disorder, for as he looks out into the crowd of the doomed, he swears he sees standing right in the middle of them the ghostly presence of the Cylon woman – gorgeous as ever in the sexy red dress he bought for her a month ago on a whim. She is watching him leave, her expression grim and accusing, like an avenging angel.

You're leaving me behind too, her expression denounces.

Gods, he hopes so.

Hunger Games Fic: Sit With Me, Muchacho (G - Haymitch, Mags)

millarific — Sun, 23 Jun 2013 21:12:08 GMT

Title: Sit With Me, Muchacho
Author: millari
Characters: Mags, Haymitch Abernathy
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Beta: trovia
Summary: “Do you tell them to target my tributes? Is that it? The weak, underfed ones? The easy targets from District Twelve?”
A/N: This started out as a reward ficlet for trovia, for working on her dissertation. She also supplied the beta and title. Thanks!
A/N 2: Crossposted on AO3 here

“Oh, for the love of a fucking dead canary!”

The piece of uniquely District Twelve slang comes roaring across the silent, half-comatose room at Mentor Central at around 3 a.m. It's been a fairly quick Games, and the few mentors actually left populating headquarters by Day Six mostly don't bother to look up, although she hears a couple of snorts of subdued laughter emitting from behind consoles. No wonder: Haymitch sounds so ridiculously provincial right now.

However, she's pretty sure none of them were paying attention to the right part of the arena to see what Mags saw – her tribute, Connor, surprising Haymitch's girl tribute in the dead of night with a spear thrust to the back while she got some desperately needed sleep. The girl awoke to him ruthlessly twisting the weapon between two of her vertebrae, blood spurting everywhere, and agonizing pain. Connor's already out of there, watching from a safe distance behind a tree in the dark, a move of which Mags approves, since the girl's still clutching a substantial hunting knife in her hand, even as she writhes around in the dirt of the arena. It's immediately clear that no parachute, even if Haymitch had a sponsor to give one, is going to save her. The girl will be lucky to last ten minutes before the hovercraft is sent out.

The low seats and the high consoles keep the mentors from having an unobstructed view of each other when working, but Mags hears the unmistakable sound of the heavy mentor headset being thrown down onto the dashboard in a fury, and the violence of chair wheels screeching across the thick mahogany floor. There are heavy, angry footfalls. But it's the surprised, staccato sound of automatic guns suddenly being clicked into life that makes Mags finally pull herself up from her station to take see what's going on.

Her vision fills with 150 pounds of Haymitch Abernathy in her face, ignoring the two overwhelmed, helmeted Peacekeepers, who have their guns pointed in reluctance at the enraged mentor.

“Haymitch,” says one in a gentle but firm voice. “You know the rules – no aggressive contact between victors.” They look supremely uncomfortable though. Most Peacekeepers here have a knee-jerk admiration of the victors, especially the ones they have been watching over in Mentor Central for years. None of them wants to arrest a victor, especially one with tributes still in the arena; although for Haymitch, this will no longer be true in about eight minutes.

“Get those out of my face!” he yells at them. “I'm not about to hit someone who could be my Gran!”

The guards look grateful when Mags waves them away.

“What is it, hijo?” she engages him, using what these days amounts to her own private term of affection, since hardly anyone anymore knows the language of her ancestors. Certainly Haymitch has no idea what it means, and that's just as well. Knowing that she's calling him son would probably unsettle him.

The District Twelve victor has kept his distance from them in his first three years of service to the Capitol. He's shown up to mentor, miserably failed at picking up sponsors, watched his tributes die – usually in the first two days – and then disappeared for the next several. He never wants to talk about where he disappears to, and all the other victors seem to have silently agreed to leave him alone until he's ready to discuss it. But they all know where Snow has been sending him during his copious downtime in the last three years, and where he'll probably be going this year by tomorrow; that can't be making these losses easier.

“Every year!” he bellows, completely out of context, but Mags immediately knows what he means. “Every fucking year your tributes kill at least one of mine! How is that? Do you tell them to target my tributes? Is that it? The weak, underfed ones? The easy targets from District Twelve?”

She turns a hard stare on him, slowly pulling off her headset and hanging it on the hook at the side of her console. “Suggest that again, and I just might start,” she says in a low, offended undertone. He stares at her agog, clearly not expecting so frank an response. She flashes him a grim smile. “I don't play that sort of game. This espectáculo perverso is horrible enough without that.”

He sinks down into the console opposite her, the one reserved for Colin, the other District Four mentor, whose tribute Marisol has already been dead since yesterday morning. He looks like he hasn't slept all night.

“Goddammit.” He pounds uselessly on the buttons in front of him with a closed fist and the twenty-four screens give off a brief, violent flicker. “Six days,” he mutters. “Six fucking days, Mags.”

The longest he's ever had tributes survive the arena. “Your girl this year even outlasted a Career,” she acknowledges in a quiet voice and sits back down. It's been a long night and her arms aren't as strong and steady as they used to be. The late night hours have taken away her muscle strength, but it's Haymitch's face that's sagging with exhaustion, his eyes hollow and with dark circles underneath. Since he's the only mentor, he has no one to relieve him at his console, and nobody would blame him for taking a few hours off in his Training Center apartment to grab a nap, but he rarely does. If he does, he sleeps on the sofa in the lounge, asking one of the Avoxes to wake him after an hour or two, or if anything happens with his tributes.

He rubs at the bridge of his nose. “I really thought they would go somewhere this year.”

“I know,” she says simply, but he just scowls at her with charged resentment

“How could you possibly know? Your tributes win every couple of years. How could you know what it's like to lose them like this, when six days of survival is a goddamned feat?”

She studies him, feeling a bit of pity, and a bit of guilt, if she's willing to admit it. Time was when she was a one-woman welcoming committee for new victors, if she did say so herself. She's been the oldest living victor for a long time now. Could remember when she had been the first ever victor from her District, the Games were that new. She had been the one who had convinced her fellow mentors early on that they shouldn't be rivals. Not something she would ever say out loud, but she was proud of how she'd convinced them to become a more or less united group: the best revenge would be to become friends, she'd told them, and it had worked.

Well, all right, it hadn't quite worked with the Ones and Twos consistently, but the camaraderie she had built among them had still given a satisfying middle finger to the Capitol more often than not, and best of all, Snow could never do anything about it, because there was nothing obvious to fight back against.

But how had she lost track of this new one? How had she let him get so lost, without even have a previous victor in his district to guide him? He's clearly part of no victor camaraderie here.

In fact, Mags doesn't know Haymitch Abernathy all that well. But she noticed right away, as soon as she saw him at sixteen on her mentoring screen, that he was a person who wouldn't deal well with being the object of her guilt, or her pity. She takes a different tack:

“You really think you're the only one, don't you, pendejo?” she chides him.

His brow wrinkles, not recognizing the word, she's sure, but definitely getting that it's an insult, possibly even a very un-Gran-like one. He bolts out of his chair, ready for a fight, but she rises up with him and stays in his personal space.

“You think you're the only one who comes into this not knowing what he's doing?” she presses. “Who says you're supposed to know what you're doing? Did anyone teach you anything? Have you ever let anyone teach you anything?”

His mouth opens, then closes with surprise. His lips press into a firm, straight line.

“Like who?” He manages to hang on to his angry bitterness enough to utter the challenge, working on it so diligently, she finds it almost comical. “Only ones who know anything about this are you all, and the less I know, the more likely your tributes stay alive. Can't say I even blame you people for not wanting to share.”

This time, it's her turn to be surprised. “What is this 'you people' nonsense?” she reproaches. “You are one of us now, whether you like it or not. And we help our own; but you have to ask for help.”

“This is not one happy family, Mags,” he retorts. “We're a group of brutal killers, assembled to produce more brutal killers. He looks over at the District 1 consoles, both still occupied, both tributes still in the Games. “What do I have in common with them over there?” he challenges. “Nothing. They stay up all night, high on caffeine and planning how their tributes can hunt mine down.” Brutus stands up and stretches, then takes a long swig of coffee, as if on cue. Haymitch gestures towards him with a sarcastic nod of his head. “Does he really look like the sharing type?”

The question inspires Mags to bend down and reach below her console, hand rustling blindly in the bag she almost never fails to keep by her feet. “If it's sharing you want, hijo ...”

She emerges triumphant with her prize between her fingers, reaching with it towards him across the small aisle that separates them: “Chicharrón?” she offers.

Haymitch looks at her like she's lost her her mind. “What the fuck, Mags?” he hisses, dumbfounded, then erupts into loud, booming, slightly helpless laughter. He sinks back down into the plush leather seat, his wiry frame sprawled all over it. The disruptive sound momentarily grabs the attention of the two District 1 mentors, who stand up with narrowed eyes, looking their way, but don't otherwise acknowledge Mags. Beetee also pops into view for a moment to see what the laughing is about, looking half-asleep, then slumps back down in his chair, and once again, she can only see the dark crown of his head. Chaff, who's walking out to the alcove where the trays of food are kept, doesn't stop at all. Mags observes how none of them acknowledge her or each other. She's surprised she's never noticed this before.

By the time her eyes fall back on Haymitch, he's quieted, and withdrawn back into his typical frown. But the gloomy spell cast over him seems to have lifted somewhat, and he takes the fried concoction from her fingers for the peace offering that it is.

“Wow, this is terrible,” he tells her in between dutiful bites. “What is it made of?”

“Pig skin,” she answers, sitting back down and watching him.

His face screws up in an instinctual expression of distaste and he now chokes down what's in his mouth, but puts the rest of it down onto the console. “Ugh, really?”

“I would think in a district as poor as yours, people would be happy to eat something with so much pig fat attached,” she chides. “Many calories.”

“In a district as poor as mine, nobody has pigs,” </i> he retorts flatly. “Well, except the baker. He can afford it.” He pauses in disbelief. “Wait, they have pigs in District Four?”

“Equus sends me the skin,” she gestures vaguely towards the District 10 console, where Equus, who is long gone since his tribute died in the bloodbath five days ago, and Gloria is already on Victors Affairs “appointments,” her tribute having died two days in, trying to collect water. “The Capitol has no use for the skin, so he sends some to me every year before the Games. Her eyes alight with the conspiratorial air of a secret. “Every year before I come to the Capitol, I order my daughter-in-law to make them for me.”

“You do?” he asks, not trying to hide the expression in his voice that says what he's really thinking - why would you want to eat these? Mags nods.

“I used to think she was incompetent at it, but after eight years of eating these malditos, I'm beginning to think she's doing it on purpose,” she grins. “Nobody could get something wrong that many years in a row, eh?”

Haymitch thinks about this, then shrugs, looking distinctly unhappy all of a sudden, and it hits her that she's chosen her words poorly. “Ay, hijo...” she sighs and watches his gloom return – chased away only for a few moments by the novelty of Linda's terrible cooking.

“All right,” she declares. “Here's what you are going to do for old Mags. First, you will go to the drinks table and get me a cerveza.”

“A what?” he asks, not really looking at her, but when he gets no verbal response, he is forced to look up and see Mags making a tippling gesture with her finger cupped in a circle, as if around the neck of a bottle. “Oh, a beer?” he confirms with subdued amusement starting to emerge once more from beneath the fog in his eyes. He gets up. “You know, I don't think any of us understand those district words of yours,” he grunts. “Why do you even use them?”

“Cállate, muchacho,” she retorts with absolutely no repentance. He gets the reproach to be quiet well enough, despite the language barrier. “I use them for the same reason Linda has to make the chicharrónes. Because sometimes you just need to have a little poder.”

She'd be more worried about uttering a statement like that if she didn't know from experience that Snow's spies who go over the surveillance tapes don't ever bother anymore with going to find the correct arcane book to translate her.

When Haymitch looks at her with a blank expression, clearly confused, she raises her right arm to the side of her head, crooking it at the elbow and contracting her bicep. “Poder,” she repeats in silent explanation. He gazes at her like he thinks she's a little demented, but charmingly so. Not surprising. She's cultivated this image ever since she founded the Games training school in District Four nineteen years ago – of the lonely, aging, possibly a little crazy woman, seeking out a trifle with which to occupy her time. A little undignified image to see reflected back at yourself in the news coverage every year, but it was worth it to get what she wanted and not look too much like she was fighting back.

In her day, only the favored districts, One and Two ever won at all, because it was all about punishment, and One and Two were allowed to win because in the Dark Days, they had been closest to the Capitol – both geographically and politically. Back in her Games, the Tenth, she was the first victor who hadn't come from Districts One or Two, a victory that wasn't supposed to happen in a Games that was supposed to be about beating down districts with questionable loyalty.

When she won anyway, she made sure to wear a soft pink dress to her crowning, her blonde hair gathered around her face in soft, wavy wisps, her voice girlish and demure, to assure them she wasn't a threat, no matter how much she wanted to tell them all to go fuck themselves.

Of course, all that about the Games has changed, but she never forgot about the power of image to keep oneself safe.

She is still pondering this when Haymitch hops up and walks over to retrieve her beer from the table.

“Now you go to bed,” she orders when he returns. He watches while she throws her head back, enjoying the cold liquid against her dry throat. Her tribute is exhausted from killing, he won't be doing much until morning. She can afford a small indulgence. “Come back after you've gotten a good night's sleep, right after breakfast, before they start sending you on any appointments. Sit down next to me,” she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, “and bring a notebook.” Her eyes again fill with mischief, this time a little more calculated, to put him at ease. “Old Mags will tell you her secrets.”

His eyes widen, the only aspect of his surprise he's unable to hide. “Thanks,” is all he says, like it's the most meaningless word he's ever uttered, and his face still has the always-present scowl; but she hears a hint of closely guarded gratitude in his voice.

“You're welcome,” she says, then waves a hand in dismissal. “Now go get some sleep before you fall down. I'll see you in the morning.”

He nods and turns away without another word, slowly walking out of Mentor Central. His body isn't as tight in the shoulders as it always is. A good start.

She and Seeder and Woof, Anthea, Kii, Beam, Silk, Genia, Jewel, and all the rest of the old guard, they are still a tight group. She's used to thinking of them as her second family. But there are many more now that are not really included in that list. She does a mental accounting of the room's consoles: Chaff, Beetee, Lyme, Angora, Spear, Blight, Brutus, Gloria, Lux ... She names them off one by one in her head. So many young ones. She's been losing track of the new ones as they arrive each year. When did that start happening?

She's taken the victor bonds too much for granted while focusing more on saving her tributes, building up Four's reputation and marketing the district into a Career hotbed that will generate sponsors and bring home victors. And while she's been busy making Games School an institution in Four, the younger generation has kept coming. And they've stuck to the company of their console screens, or their district partners, if they are lucky enough to have them. They're not connecting well with each other outside this room either, she's sure. Abernathy is just the extreme version of what's been going wrong in Mentor Central for the last eight or nine years now.

They wouldn't respond well to her forcing things, to her pushing them together. But Chaff would be a good friend for Haymitch, she thinks – a little older, always ready with a joke, a bad one, the payaso – but his heart is a kind one, and Haymitch clearly needs someone to cast some light over all those dark thoughts.

She thinks of Haymitch's “Gran” comment and realizes, the Capitol's citizens aren't the only ones that have been fooled by her eccentric old lady image. These newer victors have too, and so they'll indulge her sticking her nose in their business long enough until they start to feel the connection between each other on their own. And Chaff is already friendly with Beetee, so that's another connection to build upon. It's not much of a beginning, but it's enough. She's tended a garden of blooming friendships in this rocky soil before, and she can do it again if she starts looking for the right opportunities.

She takes another long, contented sip of her cerveza and watches her screen thoughtfully as, in the arena, Connor settles down for the night with his hard-won sleeping bag, stolen from Haymitch's tribute, who at this is already lying on a slab in a hovercraft.

It's not obvious, but as the camera zooms in on him, she can see how Connor's hands shake a little as he spreads out the bag. For all that the boy's been trained for this at Games School, Mags can see that the mounting body count is rattling him.

“The killing isn't so easy, is it, hijo?” she whispers to him as if he can hear her. If he lives, she thinks, adding yet another District Four victor to Mentor Central, he will need this little family she has created, the one she must keep creating, in order to keep his head together, to protect him from the real killers – not the tributes in the arena nor even the victors here with blood on their hands, but the diablos who strut proudly down these city streets like horses decorated for a parade - exotic flowers and colorful ribbons, blinders narrowing their vision, until they give no thought to how they trample over souls.

Song of Ice and Fire Fic: More Than One Way to Die (PG-13)

millarific — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 05:04:16 GMT

Title: More Than One Way To Die
Author: millari
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Characters: Sandor Clegane (the Hound), references to Ayra Stark, the Tickler, Polliver
Warnings: None
Beta: wyrdwritere
A/N: This was written a long time ago, in 2007, for Yuletide. I just rediscovered it, thanks to daybreak777 recently asking me about it, so I have her to thank for me not losing it, as it wasn't even on my hard drive anymore!

Godsdamn she-wolf.

She was probably already in the Saltpans by now, that is, if Gregor's men hadn't already scooped her up like a little hare to break apart for their supper.

Sandor didn't really know how long Arya Stark had been gone by now, or how long he'd been crumpled under this ancient, half-dying tree. All he knew was his body was bathed in shivering sweat. Everything felt numb, as if he were tightly wrapped in gauze. The only sensation truly left to him was the cold.

He couldn't remember ever feeling this damn cold, not in all his life; not even when he'd taken criminals up to the Wall.

This certainly was a bitch's teat of a way to go, he thought. Definitely not the way he'd planned - too weak to move, waiting for gangrene to finish him off.

I am no longer a Dog, he thought. I am a tree, dying slowly of rot.

A bitter, involuntary laugh choked out of him at that, bringing the pain back with a vengeance. Soon he was gasping and curling up into himself, uttering curses. The pain in his hip where Polliver had stabbed him seared hot, and it moved through him with lightning speed.

Perfect, he cursed. The pain's the only warm part of me.

Stranger stood off to the side of an old tree stump, chewing idly at a small patch of clover. The horse snorted impatiently at the pathetic, agonized groans he couldn't repress, as he moved naught but a few feet, then gave up in exhaustion.

Seven bloody buggering hells. Should've hit her with more than the flat of my axe, he fumed.

What did the little wolf-bitch think she would do once she made it to Saltpans anyway? No ship would take her out of the Bay of Crabs without coin. He grimaced as he pictured her naively offering herself up as a sellsword to anyone she saw walking around in mail. She was probably trussed up on the back of Gregor's saddle by now, bouncing her way back to Queen Cersei; or else at this very moment, she was being trained to spread her legs for sailors in a bayside whorehouse.

Not that he hadn't been impressed when she suddenly hacked the Tickler to ribbons; he'd give her that much. She'd attacked Gregor's pet rat with a savagery worthy of her dead direwolf. And she'd dispatched that idiot boy squire with skill enough, and certainly no fear. Who had taught her that, he wondered? No, he thought better of it. What had taught her that?

He cursed himself for even letting himself think on it. Why was he wasting his energy? She was gone; Polliver and the Tickler were gone too, and with them, any slim hope Sandor might have of ever returning to House Clegane. Well, to hell with them. He was done with them al anyway - all Lannisters, all gold cloaks, and most of all, he was done with the Mountain that Rides. Arya Stark was gone, and with her had gone Sandor's last chance at gold enough for a ship's passage - no idea where, it almost didn't matter - as long as it was somewhere where no one would call him "Prince Joffrey's Dog" anymore. Somewhere where he could stumble off, like a stag leaving the herd when it sensed its time to die.

Somewhere far from cloaks of gold and the shadow of Mountains.

His thoughts were becoming thick now, slow now, and he tried desperately to focus on the leaves above him, counting them to keep his mind clear; but they were quickly blurring into one another, becoming an indistinct blanket of green.

********

His body shot awake in terror, and he knew the fire had surrounded him before he saw it. He was lying in the dirt, in the same spot she'd left him; yet inexplicably, Stranger continued to graze without concern not ten feet away from him. The heat of flames licked at his boots, only a stray spark away from catching at his pant leg. He had to stand. He had to escape.

The fire. Where had it come from? He looked around, bewildered.

The forest was gone, as if in the blink of an eye. He recognized the shoreline of Blackwater Bay, and here, the fire blazed everywhere. The inescapable heat felt like an oven, and Sandor was sure his blood was boiling inside him. He heard screaming all around him as men on fire flailed and rolled and tried desperately to fling themselves into the Bay. Just above the chaos, Sandor could hear a voice roaring commands.

Confused, he turned in a slow circle like the weaving of a drunken man. He caught sight of the Imp astride a charger as large as a mountain. The dwarft was brandishing an equally improbable longsword, almost twice his length. He bellowed at Sandor and the other men on the field. Sandor realized that he was both inside and outside the inferno, watching as men tried to escape through the fiery wall. Man after man erupted into flames. Sandor could not bring himself to look away. Across the battlefield, he met Tyrion Lannister's gaze.

The half-formed man's eyes were cold, but the colors were not mismatched, as they should have been. Sandor saw a sadistic grin he somehow recognized from childhood, and suddenly realized why the eyes were so familiar.

"Do you know where the heart is, Brother?" The dwarf said it with a cruel relish, standing in his stirrups as he addressed Sandor.

Sandor kept one eye on the progress of the flames around him, and realized who Tyrion Lannister really was. "You are not my brother," he accused. He realized as he said it that he was angrier than he'd ever been in his life. "You were never anything to me but my tormentor."

The Imp smiled again with calm certitude, but something about his expression chilled Sandor, despite the heat of the flames. "Well then, Brother," he said coolly, "take your birthright and go."

He hurled a small projectile at Sandor. Sandor instantly knew what it was, without knowing how he knew; and he recoiled in horror, as the object came straight for him:

Wildfire.

The glass bottle exploded on Sandor's chest, and he screamed in terror as tongues of flame swarmed all over his body.

He ran. Broke through the fiery wall, even though he felt his skin melting right off him. It was Dondarrion's blade, but a thousand times worse. Screaming the whole way, Sandor broke for the bay and threw his body in. But swimming was agony to his burned, mangled skin, and the heavy armor soon plummeted him down underneath the water, like a corpse with stones in its pockets.

Just kill me, he mumbled. He felt himself falling. Please. Just do it.

The ice cold water was cooling, calming.

Do you mean to make me beg?

He felt like a child returning to the safety of a watery womb.

I'm ready to die, something in him called out. He realized as he hit bottom that he had never known anything with such certainty.

********

He awoke inexplicably on Stranger's back, the horse plodding with mindless clarity, towards what destination, Sandor could not say. But he could not do anything to change it either. The slow bounce of the horse's walking gait made the pain in his hip agonizing. Drenched in the sweat of fever, Sandor longed to remove his layers of sweat-soaked clothes, but he could not even sit up in his saddle, never mind open a button or take the horse's reins.

How did I get here? Did my fever dreams scare me straight onto my mount?

He had heard about such things happening in the thick of battle. His mind flickered briefly over the memory of the dream, over the last moments when his body had caught fire. He moved quickly to suppress the shudder.

He might not yet have the strength to control Stranger, he reasoned, but at least he was on the animal's back. That was a start. If he stayed this way for a while, at least he'd keep moving - less chance of running into hostiles. Stranger would stop once he got too tired, or too hungry, and then, Sandor could maybe try resting again; another day and he might be able to think about something else besides the pain. Then he would have to come up with a new plan.

He lay there prone, and contented himself for a while with listening to the steady, rhythmic clomp of the horse's hooves, counting them off in fours to keep alert. But after several minutes, his ear noticed a strange disjointed sound to the gait, and suddenly, he knew.

"Who's there?" he bellowed as best he could to the other horse he knew must be walking alongside his. He cursed the weak sound of his rasping voice. "Where are you taking me?"

A male voice ahead of him responded with an amused, but not outright mocking tone. "I'm taking you to my boat."

Sandor groaned. "Tell me who you are, you pox-born whelp of a swine, or I will..."

Now the voice laughed outright. Sandor noted the soft gentility there and wondered. "You will what?" he teased. "You couldn't even help me get you onto your horse when I found you under that tree. You were all dead weight," he scolded. The voice sounded middle-aged, perhaps Sandor's age, perhaps a bit older. It also sounded like it had all the time in the world.

Sandor tried shifting his head to get a glimpse of the man, or at least his clothes. Maybe if he could at least see a heraldic crest; but it was a monumental effort just to twist his gaze a few inches; and even those few inches told him that he could not afford the loss of balance, or else he would fall off the horse.

"It took me several tries to get you onto that horse, so I'd appreciate you doing your best to stay still until we reach the riverbank," the voice admonished.

"Who are you?" he growled. "Who are you selling me to? I have a right to know."

There was silence for a long moment. "Don't want no boat ride if you're just taking me to my death," he added. "Give me the mercy now and be done with it if you're going to kill me."

"Killing's not in your future, Sandor Clegane. Not if me and my brothers have anything to say about that. And once you've been with us long enough to heal, you may even decide that for yourself as well."

Suspicion tinged his voice as he confirmed, "So you do know who I am."

"Yes, I know very well who you are. Everyone knows the Hound, little brother to Gregor Clegane, who barks at everyone and everything, but whimpers at the sight of fire."

The taunt sent him into a fury. It gave him the energy he needed to shove his head upward, but he could only keep it there for the briefest of moments. In those fleeting seconds, though, he got a glimpse of the man's clothes. To his surprise, he saw no heraldry, no doublet, no armor, just plain, flowing fabric. A robe, he thought in confusion.

Sandor cringed with pain as the horse stumbled slightly on a depression in the dirt. "Do I know you?" he asked. This time, it was not a demand, but a question.

Now it was the other man's turn to think. "No," he said carefully. "I don't see how you would."

"Yet you're taking me to be healed," he said, his tone guarded. "So then you can sell me off to somebody."

"No," the man said simply. "I am not selling you to anyone. That is not our way."

He closed his eyes, quickly losing his patience. "Well then why did you bother with me at all?"

"Because of what you said." The voice was maddeningly untroubled. "When you were in the clearing, lost in your deliriums."

Sandor didn't like the sound of that at all. "What did I say?" he hesitated.

The man paused. "You said you were ready to die."

"So then you do mean to see me dead," he accused in bitter, rasping triumph.

"Then tell me the name of my killer, so I can scream his name on my way into

Hell. Tell me who you are." The man ignored the demand. "So did your delusions speak true? Is The Hound indeed ready to die?"

To Sandor's surprise, he did actually consider the question, but only for a moment.

"No," he said. "I'm not ready to die just yet."

"I did not ask if Sandor Clegane was ready to die," the man said, choosing his words with obvious precision. "I asked if The Hound was ready."

Sandor was taken aback. "I don't take your meaning."

The man sighed, as if Sandor were thick in the head. "I'm going to take you into my boat, Sandor Clegane. And where we're going, men do good works, with no expectation of thanks or remuneration. Where we're going, Sandor Clegane will be healed, and perhaps the Hound can finally be laid to rest."

There was silence as Sandor absorbed this. "Now do you take my meaning?" the man said archly.

"Who are you?" This time, his words were merely full of wonder.

"You can call me Brother."

He grunted with displeasure. "I'd rather not, actually. If you knew my brother, you'd know why."

"I do know your brother. And this is the only name I have," he said patiently. "I have been called naught but that name for some years now."

"Since when?"

"Ever since I died."

The rest of the way to the shore, the two men rode in silence.

Fic: Our House (Gaeta/Hoshi - PG)

millarific — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 00:24:49 GMT

Title: Our House
Author: millari
Characters: Felix Gaeta, Louis Hoshi, Athena, Karl Agathon, Cottle, various OCs
Pairings: Gaeta/Hoshi, Athena/Helo
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Beta: This fic was lovingly shepherded by the awesome daybreak777.
Summary: Gaeta and Hoshi get much more than they bargained for when they adopt a child on New Earth.
A/N: Written for the bsg_remix in 2010. I realized I had never posted it in my own journal, so I'm doing that for posterity. It's a remix of kappamaki33's ficlet, Mr. Gaeta Builds His Dream House. (Kappa, if you see this and know where to find an active link to your ficlet, let me know and I'll link it. I looked for 45 minutes on your journal and gaeta_squee and could not find a link anywhere except on the header to my remix fic, and that link no longer works.)

The child had this totally unnerving way of staring right through him.

“Look, I’m not saying I’m flat-out opposed to the idea,” Louis tried whispering.

A few feet away, Doc Cottle stood with a six-year-old girl in front of him that he wanted to leave with them forever. Louis had just managed to get over his shock enough to form coherent speech.

“You agreed that if Cottle ever had a child in need of adoption that we’d do it,” Felix countered loudly, taking away all Louis’ hopes of having this conversation out of earshot. The tense excitement in Felix’s voice told Louis that Felix really, really wanted this.

He looked over again at her and sighed, giving up the pretense of the two of them having a private conversation.

“Felix, we don’t know the first thing about raising a child.”

“Oh come on, you know we’ll be great to her,” Felix pounced. “And who really knows their first time what they’re doing, anyway?” He squeezed Louis’ hand and grinned at him. “Come on. She even looks a little bit like me, don’t you think?”

Louis stared over at her chocolate brown curls and matching brown eyes. She wore a thin, yellow sun dress - worn and grass-stained in a few places. Her lanky arms and face were well-tanned, like she had already started out darker than either of them. He got an image of her playing in the sun all day and tried unsuccessfully to imagine himself inserted into that scene.

“But…” he trailed off helplessly. “…if this were a normal situation, we would be learning something about how to do this. There’d be books we could read, other parents we could talk to…”

He looked back at Cottle, who stood with his hands resting on the girl’s shoulders. She shrank slightly into the grizzled doctor at Louis’ sudden attentions.

“Wait, what about the Agathons?” Louis tried, his mind racing, trying to think of people he remembered from Galactica with children. “Why don’t you take her to them? They’ve already got a kid. She’ll fit right in.”

He ignored Felix’s huffing sound of disappointment at what felt like a perfectly reasonable idea to Louis. But Cottle shook his head.

“No can do. Sharon Agathon just had a miscarriage less than a month ago. She’s not ready, physically or emotionally for another child. And nobody else around here is as well off as you two.”

This was true, Louis acknowledged with a touch of pride. Felix was a Caprica City boy, so about the only thing he’d known how to grow were moldy experiments in his refrigerator. But Louis had grown up on a farm, had belonged to a youth farming club, and had even won prizes for his eggplants and his squashes at the Picon National Fair. And Felix had been an apt pupil, finding that he liked watching things grow. He did whatever he physically could to nurture their crops. Their “house” – a hut made of a combination of smaller trees, random branches, cattails and dung for sealant – had more or less survived the winter, and Louis was already working on a much better one. They’d had to abandon Felix’s more grandiose ideas and aim for something not unlike the barns Louis grew up with, just shorter and made with logs instead of uniform planks of wood.

The result had been a very successful first season, all things considered, and they’d even had enough food left over to share with some of the less talented or less fortunate people living nearby.

“Face it,” Cottle said, eyeing their tidy rows of green, leafy things well on their way to being edibles, “you boys are the best option she’s got. So will you do it or what?”

Louis looked back at Felix, who was directing smiles at the girl despite her impassive expression.

“I just didn't think this would come up so soon,” Louis sighed. But he felt himself giving in already. It wasn't every day that he got to see delight like this in his partner’s eyes. Plus, Felix had given Cottle his word, and Louis wasn't about to sabotage the value of that, especially when this kid obviously needed someone to take care of her.

“Yeah, of course we will.”

Felix gave him an enthusiastic kiss on the cheek and started ambulating to where Cottle stood.

Louis followed him, uncertain.

“Hello, there,” he said softly. “I’m Louis. What’s your name?”

The little girl shrank against Cottle yet again, this time burying her face in the doctor’s pant leg. Louis sighed. It had been a difficult year, and Louis felt a sudden pang that from now on, their lives might never be easy again. But then, really, he couldn't remember anymore the last time he’d considered his life easy.

“Her name’s Penelope,” Cottle answered when it became clear she was too shy to answer.

“Hi Penelope,” Felix said brightly, trying to make up for his inability to bend down properly to greet her. “I’m Felix. We’d be glad to have you come live with us from now on.”

The girl clung to Cottle wordlessly, her face still buried.

“She’s still getting over losing her parents,” Cottle growled. “Why don’t we have a talk?”

**

“She lived in the settlement about fifteen klicks from here. Her parents died of one of these Earth diseases I still don’t have a name for.”

Felix watched Penelope – she’s our daughter now, he told himself – playing silently in a cleared area nearby with some small rocks.

“No one knew for over twenty-four hours that her parents had died,” Cottle explained. “I’d been there about two weeks ago, when her mother fell sick. The father held out a little longer, but in the end, they died more or less at the same time, within twelve hours of each other. When I came back around to check on them, I found her in the house with her parents’ corpses.”

Louis emitted a low whistle. “Poor kid,” he whispered, looking over at her. She was totally lost in her own world, silent and seemingly oblivious to their presence.

Cottle took another puff from his pipe. “As you can see, she doesn't talk. She hasn't said a word since I got her. Her parents died a pretty horrific death. It may take her a while to talk again.”

“Do you know how we can help her?” Felix asked. Although he didn't want to admit it to Louis, he was more wary now of what they’d just taken on.

“I’m no shrink,” Cottle groused as he stubbed out the embers of his pipe with a small stick and put the pipe into his jacket pocket. “But in my expert medical opinion…” He shrugged. “I guess you just gotta wait for her to work it out.”

**

Forty-eight hours later, when she still wasn't talking, they started to worry.

“I suppose we should expect this,” Felix murmured as he watched her out of the corner of his eye. She picked desultorily at the meat he’d cooked for her over the open fire they had built under a small shelter outside their home. “She’s probably afraid of attaching to new people in case they die too.”

“Yes, probably,” Louis agreed. He wished they had more to go on than just guessing.

“All right, I'll admit it,” Felix murmured later that night as he and Louis spooned into each other in the bed they had made together out of branches, hay and blankets. Luckily, fabrics had been excepted in what Felix liked to refer to as the Lee Adama's Great Slingshot Into the Sun. Why guns and computers and even plates and cups, but not fabrics, he'd often wondered. Not that he was about to complain about getting to keep his clothes and blankets. He wondered with a trace of bitterness if the Cylons, who mostly lived on their own here on Earth, were reducing themselves to such restrictive living conditions.

“Admit what?” Louis asked.

“That this is harder than I thought it would be.”

“Yeah, I know.” Louis breathed a sigh of relief to know that he wasn't the only one who felt this way. "Shouldn't we be doing something more? I mean, if we just let her be and pretend like she's behaving normally, what if she just stays that way? What if she never talks again?"

"Whoa, Louis,” Felix cut him off, a chuckle underneath his words as he kissed Louis on the back of the neck. "You’re getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you?” he teased. then turned thoughtful.

"But you know, if you really consider it, you've already had plenty of experience at something like this."

"I've never taken care of kids in my life!” Louis protested. “Not even a sister or a brother! I was the youngest child, remember?”

"But you do know about being patient with someone who’s getting over stuff,” Felix insisted. “Think about how you helped me after New Caprica. And after the Demetrius. And the Raptor.”

He could hear Louis thinking.

"We just gotta be patient like you were with me," Felix concluded, hoping he was actually right about this. "Give her space, but make sure she knows that we're here when she's ready.”

"Hmm..." Louis considered Felix's argument. "And what do we do in the meantime while she's figuring it out?"

"Just be ourselves, I guess."

"All right,” Louis replied, even though he wasn't really very certain. Not certain at all.

**

It wasn't a bad plan. The devil was in the details, though, especially when a week later, Penelope began waking up in the middle of the night with nightmares.

The first time, her screaming triggered for Felix a nightmare about the detention centers on New Caprica. He awoke in a panic – just as one of the Dorals was handing him over to a Centurion – to find Louis shaking him into consciousness.

“Sorry. You were screaming too.” Louis’ voice was terse as he crawled out of their bed and over to where Penelope was thrashing in her sleep.

“Sssh, it’s okay,” he tried to soothe her, but her ear-piercing shrieks merely subsided to inconsolable sobbing that soon propelled Felix out of the bed too, sliding himself towards them without his crutches, listening to them wordlessly in the dark.

“You’re safe now, Penelope,” Louis comforted her. “We’re here for you. We won’t let anything hurt you.”

Louis wanted to take the child into his arms, to comfort her, but even stroking her hair seemed to upset her. In fact, the only thing that worked at all was them both simply staying by her side until she cried herself back to sleep.

The dreams came back the following night, then the next, and then again and again. By the time a week had passed, the two of them were so exhausted, they walked around zombie-like and cranky. Felix knew things were bad when the normally long-tempered Louis snapped at him for not weeding one of the plots like he’d promised. But the simple fact was, Felix was having trouble remembering his own name. He’d tried to do the weeding one day while Louis was out hunting, but had stopped when he’d accidentally pulled out several vegetable plants instead of weeds. Penelope looked tired too, and they would find her taking impromptu naps all over the place – in her bed, but also in between the crops or in the tall grasses behind the house.

Meanwhile, the nightmares continued unabated.

By the ninth night of this, Felix found himself wide awake in the dark, long after Louis had fallen asleep. He realized he was waiting for the screaming to begin. But of course, it only came after his body had given up out of boredom and exhaustion.

When her cries startled him awake, Felix knew he had to get out of the bed, but his body refused to cooperate. He elbowed Louis in the ribs, but Louis’ body was rebelling too. Felix didn't know how it was possible, but the man continued to sleep right through the noise.

Godsdamn it, Louis, he grumbled inwardly and tried again to push himself out of bed, knowing the shrieks would continue until he pulled her out of her dreams. But he was so exhausted, he could only get himself a few inches towards her. He lay back on the dirt floor, pressed his palm to his forehead in frustration, and wondered what his mother would have done in this situation.

A moment later, their home was filled with Felix’s singing – a simple, soothing tune about the stars at night that he remembered his mom singing to his younger sister. He sang loudly at first, but once he realized she was definitely awake, he made it into a soft, sing-song melody, inserting her name clumsily into the song like his mother used to do.

Penelope’s shrieks stopped abruptly as she awoke. Her cries soon returned, but thankfully only as gulping sniffles. He kept singing the song again and again, long after he’d run out of lyrics he could remember. He sang until he was as certain as he could be in the dark that she’d fallen asleep.

In silent relief, he found the strength to slide himself back to the bed and into Louis’ arms. The disembodied kiss that greeted him on the cheek startled him.

“Oh, now you’re awake,” he mock groaned. “How convenient.”

“That was brilliant,” Louis told him sleepily. “Worked like a charm.” He turned over. “Good thing we have one musician in the family. If we’d had to rely on my singing, she’d be back in another nightmare.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Felix scoffed, stifling back a yawn. Privately, though, he had to admit that Louis was kind of blissfully tone-deaf. “I’m just glad I found something that worked.” He drew their blanket over his shoulders, grateful for the silence. “I can’t wait until she talks again and this all gets easier.”

“Me too,” Louis managed to get out before they both fell asleep in utter exhaustion.

**

The nightmares continued, but luckily Felix’s singing meant they didn’t even have to get out of their bed anymore. Her body soon trained itself to wake her up to the sound of his singing, even from across the room, and soon she wasn’t even truly waking up anymore. She seemed to just let the sound of his lullabies permeate her subconscious and soothe her back into quietude. The three of them got more sleep and Louis found himself considering more normal parental thoughts again.

“She needs toys,” he announced, a bit horrified at the omission. “She must have had at least a couple of toys, right? Why didn't Cottle bring any of her things with her?”

“Well, if her parents both died of an unknown disease, he was probably afraid her toys were contaminated,” Felix said logically.

“Yeah, but she needs toys,” he insisted. “Kids play, right? Isn't it really important for their development?”

“You’re right,” Felix agreed. “She needs something to keep her mind active.”

“Felix,” Louis admonished. “She needs to have fun.”

They gave her whatever toys they could beg, borrow, or improvise, but to their consternation, she played with none of them. She didn't seem to want to play at all.

But she did seem interested in their daily routines. She was an extraordinarily light sleeper, and she would wake up with Louis and the dawn – rubbing her eyes sleepily but alert – when he rose to work their plots in the coolest part of the day. The first morning, he tried to coax her back to bed, but the whole exercise only succeeded in waking a groaning Felix, who needed more sleep these days due to the strain of walking around on the prosthetic and crutches; not to mention, waking up in the middle of every night to sing to Penelope was slowly taking its toll.

Her favorite pastime seemed to be sitting on the ground outside and staring at Louis working the field. She’d sit and watch for hours, clinging to the one toy that she would even deign to touch – a faceless, simple doll Felix had made for her out of dried grasses and a scrap of fabric that served as a makeshift dress. She didn't really play with it, just clung to it.

“It does seem sort of unnatural, doesn't it?” Felix admitted. “I thought kids naturally gravitated to any sort of play they could get.”

“You know what I noticed today?” Louis said thoughtfully. “She doesn't like to get too close, but she always stays near.”

“You know, you’re right. She never lets me out of her sight when we’re together, which I guess makes sense if you think about it. If you just lost your both your parents at the same time, you’d want to keep an eye on the new ones, right? Make sure you don’t lose them too.”

“She needs to be able to count on us,” Louis declared. “From now on, we make sure one of us is in her sight at all times. Until she decides otherwise, she doesn’t face the world without one of us nearby, all right?”

Felix squeezed his hand. “It's a good idea.”

**

The plan was easy enough to execute when Louis was working the land or on his long-term project of building them a bigger and better home. Or when Louis went on his half-day hunting or foraging trips and Penelope sat with Felix under an open shelter making meals from tubers and roots they stored in a small, cool pit out behind the house.

However, it was difficult to stay in her sight when it came to anything that required privacy. Using the outhouse proved particularly tricky. The first time, she’d patiently watched Louis go inside and close the door behind him, but when he’d came back out, she’d moved up so close to the door that he banged right into her. Louis had emerged to her indignant squeals and the sight of her small hand vigorously rubbing her forehead.

“Oh Gods, Penelope! I’m sorry!” he cried, reaching out to touch the red spot on her face. She let him check it, but he felt how her body went stiff and immediately withdrew his hand.

“Sorry,” he reassured her. “I won’t touch you until you’re okay with it, all right?”

She didn't answer, but her shoulders seemed to relax a bit. Louis smiled.

“Just don’t stand so close next time, okay?” he warned.

But she repeated the same behavior with Felix the next day. The shock of running right into her made Felix lose his balance and go tumbling into the dirt, his crutches clattering around him. For the millionth time, he cursed the loss of his leg.

As he tried to compose himself, he saw the alarm in her eyes at the way his leg and the prosthetic had splayed on the ground. She took off running.

“Penelope!” he cried after her, as soon as he could push himself into a sitting position but her legs were already taking her as fast as she could run back towards the house. He sighed and slid himself over to grab his crutches.

When he finally made it back, he found her sitting on her bed, clutching the doll like a lifeline.

“Hey,” he intoned. “Penelope…” he began. The syllables felt awkward in his mouth.

“You know, ‘Penelope’ is an awfully big name for such a little girl,” he observed. “Can I call you ‘Penny’ instead?”

Her head shot up at the nickname. “Huh,” he said, wondering. “Did your mom and dad call you that? Do you like that name better?”

She clung silently to the doll, but he noticed that she kept his gaze.

“All right then,” he announced. “Penny it is.”

He bent down with his good leg and maneuvered himself onto the ground to be at her level. He noticed how her eyes seemed transfixed by the prosthetic.

“It’s not that different from your leg.” He smiled and tapped the metal. “You want to touch it?”

She reached out a tentative hand, her fingers barely grazing along the prosthetic until they reached the spot where his end cap met his pants leg. She blinked and looked back up at him, her eyes wide.

“The rest of my leg’s just like yours,” he reassured her. “I just had … an accident.” He pushed the memory deep down. He hadn't thought of the shooting for almost a year now.

“It’s a little harder for me to walk than you, so I may fall again sometime,” he explained. “But it’s no big deal, okay? It doesn't mean I’m sick or that I’m hurt or anything. I just get up again, and I’m fine. I’m not going anywhere, and neither is Louis, understand?”

It took a few moments, but she eventually nodded, and the thrill of that simple, unexpected gesture, after so much blankness from her, barreled right through him.

“So when one of us is in another room, or with a door closed,” he continued, “you’re trying to listen, aren't you, to make sure we’re still there?”

She looked away.

“Just because you can’t see one of us doesn't mean that we've left you, okay? So don’t stand so close to the doors like that. We don’t want to accidentally hurt you.”

This time, she remained still, but she put the doll back down onto the bed.

“All right, then,” he said. “Let’s get back to cooking, huh?”

They remained mostly in silence for the rest of the day, but Felix liked to think that it was a companionable one. He whistled to himself as he turned the tubers over in a long, slow roast over the open fire. The second time he rousted himself up, groaning, to get more wood for the fire, she surprised him by shooting up and running to the pile herself. What her little hands brought back wasn't nearly enough to keep the fire going for much longer, but he praised her anyway.

“Thank you, Penny,” he said with quiet excitement. “We make a good team.”

She still didn't speak, but nevertheless, Felix felt that something had changed between them. She met his gaze now when he spoke to her, as if she were really hearing him now. When he asked her again to bring some wood from the pile, she dashed off immediately and brought some back. She seemed to like the responsibility.

The next day, when Louis went off fishing, Felix came up with an idea.

“You know what?” he told her. “I've got another job you could help me with.”

He took her to the plots where their vegetables were growing nicely, and maneuvered himself onto the ground again, this time taking off the prosthetic, keeping his voice even and untroubled as he showed her the amputation at his knee.

“Don’t worry. I’m taking it off because it’s actually easier to get around this way when I need to do this kind of a job.”

He began the arduous task of weeding, sliding along the furrows between the vegetables so he could easily reach the offending plants. This task always resulted in his clothes becoming intolerably messy, but really, it was the only way that was actually convenient for him to do this, and he would be damned if he was going to let Louis be entirely responsible for all the food they ate. Louis already did all the planting and watering and was the only one who could realistically forage and go after game.

“See the much bigger plants that are growing in a straight line?” he pointed towards the crops. “Those are our food. The other, smaller stuff? Those are weeds; we don’t want those. Pull those out and toss them outside the plot, okay?”

He watched her carefully select a weed and yank it out. She examined it for a moment, then gestured towards him with it in her hand.

“Yes, exactly,” he nodded. “Good job.”

When Louis returned a couple of hours later with a cloth sack filled with fruits, he was startled to find Penelope and Felix in the garden, each in their own row, throwing their weeds into a communal pile behind them.

“What are you two doing in my plots?” he asked, bemused.

“We’re weeding,” Felix said matter-of-factly. Both of them were covered in dust, their thick curls damp with sweat and sticking to their foreheads.

“I can see that,” Louis grinned, putting down the fruit and walking over to them. “I should have known you’d raise a kid with an overdeveloped work ethic. Remember what I said about fun?”

He bent down. “Penelope, honey.” He was still chuckling under his breath. “You don’t have to do that, you know. You can go play with your toys if you want.”

“Louis,” Felix interrupted as Penelope tossed yet another weed onto their pile. “She nodded at me today when I talked to her,” he informed him in a lower tone. “Trust me, we’re fine.”

Louis stopped immediately, finally getting it, his heart fluttering with hope. “Oh,” he said with quiet excitement.

“You’re doing a great job, Penelope,” he told her, his voice full of quiet awe.

She didn't acknowledge him, absorbed in her task, but that was just fine, Louis thought.

“Oh, and we decided,” Felix added, a gleam in his eyes that Louis hadn't seen since the first day they’d said yes to Cottle. “She’s not Penelope anymore. She’s Penny.”

“Penny.” Louis tried the name out for size.

“She likes it better,” Felix told him confidently.

“She does?” Louis glanced at her again. “Is that true, Penny?”

To his surprise, she raised her head and met his gaze, just for a moment, as if in affirmation. An amazed smile crept across his face as he absorbed the communication that had just transpired between them. He watched her for a while as she yanked weeds out of the ground like she had a personal vendetta against each one.

“Wow, she’s really good at that, isn't she?” he remarked.

“She’s much faster at it than me,” Felix agreed with a satisfied smile. “I think we should make it her job once in a while. Would you like that, Penny?”

Her head rose again, and after a moment, she nodded. Louis uttered something between a laugh and a cry of delight, attracting her startled attention.

“No, it’s okay,” he said quickly, fearful of making her retreat back into herself. “You’re doing great.”

Thank you, he mouthed at Felix, who just shrugged and extended his hand for Louis to help him up.

“You know,” Louis whispered in his ear as he put his arm around Felix, “for the first time, I feel like she’s really our daughter.”

He heard a percussive sound at the back of Felix’s throat. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

The two of them just stood like that for a long time, absurdly happy at the sight of her weeding.

**

The nightmares went away after that, and soon, the days were flying by nicely, with Penny and Louis falling into a routine of getting up together at dawn, alternating their work between weeding and the harvesting of mid-season crops. Louis showed Penny how to plant the seeds of a bean he’d discovered growing not far from their homestead the previous year. He gave her a little section of the plot that had already been harvested, and soon, she was tending her own little sprouts alongside the sweet potato and yam-like vegetables still growing to maturity. In fact, she took to it so well, he wondered if her parents had been starting to teach her things.

Sometimes, for variety, he’d take her instead on foraging trips, looking for nuts and edible roots, or edible greens he was teaching her to identify in among the grasses. By mid-morning, when they’d return home, Felix would have gotten up and prepared a breakfast for them of mashed legumes or tubers drenched with crushed berries for flavor and vitamin content. They’d sit together in the dirt at a short dining table of sorts they’d created last year by arduously dragging a large, flat rock they’d found when they’d broke ground for the new house Louis was building.

In the late afternoons, when the work was done for the day, they showed her how to draw with a stick in the dirt. Often, they would draw their own checkerboard into the ground and try playing chess, using different rocks and inedible berries for the pieces. But they inevitably lost track of which piece was which, and would give up their game, preferring to relax with their backs against the table, watching Penny draw.

They always made a point of including her in most of their conversations, even if she probably didn't understand half of them, and even though she never spoke back.

Until one day, without warning, she did.

Her first words with them were hardly momentous, but difficult to argue with.

“I wish we had cereal,” she pronounced one morning at breakfast.

At the sound of her voice – tinny and girlish – Felix choked on a bite of yam. He spent the next several seconds coughing, while Louis stared at her with his hand over his mouth.

“Cereal?” Felix could hear the bewilderment in Louis’ voice.

“Can we have oatmeal for breakfast?” she asked, unfazed by their reactions. “I’m sick of yams.”

They sat there for a long moment, totally flabbergasted by the randomness of her first words. But then, forgetting himself, Louis reached out for her and pulled her into a excited hug. The expression on her face – startled, but not unhappy – and the way her small, stiff frame relaxed and then sank into Louis’ arms, told Felix he would have gone out and hunted down an elk if that’s what she had asked for. Hot cereal seemed like a bargain by comparison.

“Anything you want, Penny,” he told her, his words tinged with joy and relief. “Keep talking, and I’ll get you all the cereal you want.

“Just give me a few days.”

Thinking about it, he realized that they had some old sweet potatoes from the previous year that had dried out and become mostly unpalatable. Felix had been saving them in case they ever ran into truly desperate times, but he realized that they were dried out enough that he could use a rock to grate them into a powder. He could then pour hot water over it and make a sort of approximation of hot cereal. It could work.

Felix reached out and stroked her hair, thrilled at the barrier that had just fallen away between them. She looked back at him, her brown eyes calm and focused. He wanted to hug her, but she was still in Louis’ arms and he didn't want to overwhelm her.

**

They ate Felix’s “oatmeal” for a week straight, much to Penny’s vocal delight. Now that she had found her words, she was a fountain of them spilling out into their lives.

Once she realized the power that her happiness held over them, new requests surfaced – bread, chocolate milk, candy. Most of these requests introduced them to the newfound value of the word “no,” but Felix realized after his powdered potato innovations that he could rather easily fashion a crude oven using a dug out pit and some of the thin rock slabs they’d been neatly piling up over time behind the site of their unfinished new home. He made the dried potato powder into a dough of sorts, and after a few days of experimentation, they sat by the fire, tearing off chunks from sheets of warm flatbread. They were very flat, of course, but were still heavenly when warm and dipped into a gourd filled with mashed berries.

“Gods, I think this is the most delicious thing I've had in years.” Louis laid back and tossed another piece of the delicacy into his mouth before tearing off a piece and gesturing with it towards Penny, who opened her mouth and let him aim a piece at her. He missed wildly, provoking tiny squeals of outrage as she scrambled to pick up the piece of bread that had fallen into the dirt.

“You always miss!” she protested as she popped the escaped piece into her mouth.

“What?” He adopted a wounded tone. “I do not!”

“No, she’s right,” Felix piped up unhelpfully, reaching out an impatient hand for the bread. “You do always miss, Louis.”

“Hmmph.” Louis pretended to grumble at her. “It’s possible I liked you better when you didn't talk so much.”

But of course, the two of them were absolutely thrilled. To encourage her, Felix instituted a new ritual of spending the early evening after dinner around the dying fire, telling each other stories. Her imagination was filled with badly thought out stories about princesses and talking animals, which always made less sense than theirs, but they felt they could hardly complain, since theirs were mainly veiled retellings of the misadventures of various crew members on Galactica, designed on one level to entertain her with fairy tale kings, wizards, and cartoonish villains, and on another level to make each other laugh:

“…so then the King Papadama was touched by an magic curse and turned into an evil ogre. He persecuted his subjects by bringing monsters into the kingdom to persecute them…”

Louis quirked an eyebrow at that. They hadn't talked much at all about the mutiny after the Admiral had reluctantly granted Felix clemency and kept Felix in the brig. When they had reached this new Earth, even Adama had seen that keeping Felix in jail was pointless.

“…the worst of them was a fire-breathing dragon…” Felix continued.

“What was its name?” Penny interrupted him with bated breath.

“What?” Felix asked in surprise. “It was a dragon. It didn't have a name.”

Penny made a dubious face. “It has to have a name!”

“Oh,” he said, momentarily nonplussed. He didn't particularly see why it particularly needed a name. “Uh, I guess its name was uh….” He racked his brain.

“…the dreaded Thrace Monster,” he decided. “That was its name. It liked to taunt its enemies before it breathed fire on them.”

Louis nearly died laughing, confusing Penny. When he caught his breath, he saw Felix’s knowing, mischievous grin. Apparently, Penny wasn't the only one in this family that was maybe, just maybe finally starting to heal.

Family. That’s what they were becoming, he realized with a start. Not the kind that either of them had envisioned when they’d first agreed they both wanted children, but a family nonetheless.

Still, Louis thought, this can't be it. It can't possibly be this easy.

Penny had lost both her parents, at the same time, to what must have been a horrific disease. He knew too well from his time on the Pegasus, from his experiences with Felix, and from the rumors he’d heard about people who’d been in the jails on New Caprica, that people didn't just forget trauma that easily. Penny’s happiness was too fledgling to ruin right now with all sorts of troubling questions about her parents, and the last thing he wanted to do was re-traumatize her. But those memories were going to resurface again sometime.

“…and then the curse was lifted, and there was much rejoicing throughout the kingdom…” Felix told the story in his most singsong voice, “and the Thrace Monster was banished forever. Everyone lived happily ever after. The End.”

Louis watched the pleased light in Penny’s eyes and tried to not get caught up in his sense of unease.

**

After Penny kept speaking for a few weeks, Louis had made the five-klick walking journey to the home of Ron and Nancy Provo. He returned in the evening with a “play date” for Penny with the Provos' six-year-old daughter, Melissa.

Louis had first met Ron on the Pegasus, when the man had been perpetually whipping out his wallet-sized photos of his new baby girl, Melissa. The two men had met again when they’d all first arrived on Earth and Louis had volunteered to build temporary shelters while waiting to find out Felix's fate. He’d been shocked to see the tiny infant in Ron's pictures transformed into a chatty six-year-old girl, and the memory had stayed with him even after Provo and his wife had settled on their own homestead.

Penny and Melissa became fast friends. The two families took turns making the journey to each other’s homes to let their daughters socialize regularly. A month passed this way, while Ron and Louis spent these visits predictably reminiscing and Felix and Nancy half-listened to their partners' stories about life on the Pegasus. If the stories were boring, they fell asleep contentedly in the hot afternoon sun.

Today was one of those days. Felix realized he’d been asleep for a while when he abruptly woke up to the sound of Louis and Ron’s raucous laughter over some shared joke he knew he wouldn't get. Yawning, he felt Nancy tap him on the shoulder. “Hey, you want some of this cold tea we made out of those maroon berries that are everywhere around here?” she offered.

Felix nodded, still drowsy and relaxed, and pulled himself up out of the grass and onto the support of his crutch. As he walked towards the house with Nancy, he cast an idle glance towards the tall grasses where Penny and Melissa were contentedly swinging themselves around a low tree branch like gymnasts. He smiled to see Penny so happy. He found it hard to believe that not long ago, she'd been such a withdrawn, silent child.

We're lucky, he thought as Nancy gave him the tea in a dried-out gourd. It was funny. He never would have thought to use that word to describe them last year when they’d begun the arduous process of setting up camp and building a home with virtually no tools to help them.

When they returned, Nancy happily settled back into a nap. Ron and Louis had started talking now about the rescue of Hera Agathon.

Felix swallowed back a guilt-ridden lump in his throat as he stood there listening to the two men getting nostalgic about events he had missed completely because he was in the brig. Ron and Louis had such an easy amiability together.

This was how it had been between him and Helo once.

That's a useless road to go down, he thought. There had been times in the last year when he'd let himself consider (just for a second) the possibility of making the trek to Karl and Sharon's homestead, just showing up at their door and trying his luck with them. But realistically, he couldn't imagine facing them, not after all that had happened.

He was sure he must have spent several minutes feeling slightly sorry for himself, until he looked back over at the tree where Penny and Melissa had been playing and saw no one at all.

“Frak!” he exclaimed.

Louis and Ron abruptly stopped chatting, and Nancy woke up with a start. They followed his stunned gaze and soon caught up to the fact that they were all looking at an empty space where there should be two children playing in the tall grass.

Felix tried to run until he was rudely reminded of the limitations of his prosthetic and crutches, and had to limp over at a frustratingly slow pace, far behind Louis and the Provos.

They found the girls right by the tree, hidden by the grass' height. Melissa lay
on the ground unconscious. Penny sat on the ground a foot away, her legs tucked
underneath her as she rocked back and forth, crying silently.

“Penny! What happened?” Louis grabbed her by the shoulders and looked her over for signs of injury, but she seemed fine physically. She stared at him through her tears, doing nothing to wipe them away. Nancy started crying too, as her husband picked their daughter up in his arms and started carrying her back towards their home.

“You take care of Penny,” Louis told Felix, his feet already in motion. “I'll get Cottle.”

**

No matter what Felix tried, Penny wouldn't move from the spot where they'd found her. She'd finally stopped crying, but in a moment of panic, Penny had retreated back into the safety of total, detached silence.

“Penny,” he pleaded with her, sitting awkwardly in the grass next to her. “Tell me what you're thinking. Trust me, it'll be better once you talk about it.”

She didn't reply. She just kept staring at the long matted blades where Melissa had been lying before her father had taken her away.

“Melissa's going to be fine,” he assured her, even though he didn't really know that yet. “She just bumped her head.”

Still nothing. She wouldn't even look at him.

“Come on, Penny, Talk to me. Are you scared? What are you scared of?”

Her head whirled around at the question. She grabbed onto his shirt and buried her face in it, exploding into a crying fit like he hadn't seen since the nightmares.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her shaking body into his lap, rocking her back and forth, feeling her hot tears soak through his shirt.

“It's okay, it's okay,” he said soothingly for several minutes, until she had exhausted herself into stillness and she lay silent against his body, listening to his heartbeat.

“Melissa fell from the tree,” she confessed, her voice muffling into his shirt. “We were climbing and she fell…”

“It's okay,” he exhaled deeply, his relief palpable at hearing her speak again. “Louis is getting the doctor.”

She went quiet again for a few minutes.

“My mom went to sleep. I was playing,” she sniffled. “Then she didn't wake up anymore.”

Felix winced at the image.

“Penny, I'm so sorry. I wish I could bring them back for you.” He cupped her face in his palms. “But we love you very, very much, and we're trying our best to make you happy with us.”

He felt her turn stiff. “But they're right there!” She pointed at the ground where they'd found Melissa. “Make them wake up!” she demanded, on the verge of tears again.

Poor thing, he thought. Of all the things for her imagination to conjure up… He tried to go along with her, to think of a good spin to put on her imagination. “Don't you think they look happy asleep? Maybe we should leave them be.”

“No!” she scoffed. “They're sick! Look at them!”

Her hands grabbed his own like a tiny vise around his fingers. Suddenly, Felix felt an overwhelming sensation shoot through him, like a jolt of electricity coursing through his body. There was a brief but vivid flash - almost like a memory but distinctly not – of a woman and man, both in their twenties, aged beyond their years by the sallow color to their faces, and the red lesions all over their faces. He pulled back in shocked realization, staring at Penny, unable to say a word.

This was not happening. It couldn't be.

**

Though he couldn't exactly take an x-ray to confirm it, Cottle decided that Melissa had most likely had experienced a mild concussion from her fall – serious but not deadly. Her parents just needed to take some precautions over the next few days, and she'd be fine. By the evening, the two children were playing quietly but happily in the house where the four adults could keep an eye on them.

As soon as things calmed down, Felix took Cottle outside without saying anything to Louis, who was busy distracting Penny with playing games anyway. Cottle looked less than surprised at Felix's insisting on a private talk and shuttling him out the door. This told Felix everything he needed to know.

“She's a Cylon, and you knew from the beginning, didn't you?” he rounded on him as soon as they were out of earshot. “Why did you hide it from us?”

Cottle lit his pipe with maddening nonchalance.

“First of all, genius, she's not a Cylon. She’s a half-Cylon, half-human. A hybrid. There's a difference. And second of all, Why do you think I didn't tell you? You led an anti-Cylon mutiny!”

Felix hadn't been expecting that answer. “Then why did you give her to us?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

Cottle scowled, unrepentant. “I didn't have anyone else to ask.”

“No Cylon wanted her?”

“I didn't ask any Cylons,” he said flatly. “The girl had been raised as a human, and frankly, from what I can tell, most Cylons tend to get pretty nutty when it comes to the subject of children. She'd already lost her parents and didn't need more trauma.”

He offered Felix an apologetic drag from his pipe. After a moment, Felix accepted it.

“How did you know she was a hybrid?” he asked in between puffs.

“Her mother confided in me. The child didn't know. The adoptive father never knew. She decided when she got sick that wanted someone to know, so that they could tell the kid one day.” He turned a questioning gaze on Felix. “So how did you know?”

“Which Cylon model is her father?” Felix asked instead. It was disturbing to think back to New Caprica and imagine that one of those models that had terrified him every day was Penny's father.

“A Simon. They slept together on Gemenon a few times, a year before the Attacks, when the Cylons were still infiltrating the Colonies. She didn’t know what he was. They’d already broken up when she got pregnant, so she never bothered telling him. Then, once she saw endless copies of him on New Caprica, she realized the truth. She never told anyone. She was afraid that either the Cylons or the humans might take her child away.”

Cottle paused, realization suddenly dawning.

“Wait,” he frowned. “No one but me knew about this. How did you ever figure it out?”

When Felix told him about the projection, the pipe almost fell out of Cottle's mouth.

“Seriously?” he said. “How did you even recognize it for what it was?”

Felix looked away. “That Eight on the Raptor. The one I had to … ” he drifted off uncomfortably. “Anyway, she projected at one point on the Raptor to try and find our lost coordinates. I got a glimpse of it.”

Cottle stared at him in wonder. “You know that it shouldn't even be possible for a human to share a Cylon's projection, right?” he said.

“I have no idea how this works.” He swallowed hard. “This isn't what I signed on for.”

Cottle quirked an eyebrow. “Felix, I don’t have anyone else who can take her…”

“No! I know that! And I'm not saying …” His head lolled back on his shoulders in frustration. “I love Penny.”

Cottle took a contemplative puff. “Well, all right, then. Good.”

“I just … “ He tapped a foot in the dirt. “What do I know about raising a Cylon-human hybrid child? What if this projection stuff is just the beginning, and Louis and I are out of our depth?”

Cottle considered the question over a long drag. “Listen, go talk to Sharon Agathon,” he concluded. “She'll know more about this hybrid stuff than anyone else.”

“Lieutenant Agathon?” Felix grimaced. “We're not exactly friends.”

Cottle's grunted. “Not exactly friends as in, 'She'll make me grovel a bit,' or 'I'm taking my life into my own hands darkening her door?'"

“To be honest, I’m not really sure.”

He offered Felix a drag off his pipe again. This time, Felix took it.

“Well, take Hoshi with you,” he growled. “And take the girl. She can hardly kill you in front of both of them, right?”

**

Once Louis had gotten over the initial shock of learning the truth about Penny, his first and only question had been: “Do we still get to keep her?”

Felix had been amazed at how that one question had cut through all of his doubts like a scythe hacking a path through the savannah. All his lingering questions about the trustworthiness of Cylons, about the need to hold them accountable for their actions, seemed insignificant and petty when he actually stopped thinking of Penny as an abstraction.

But none of that made this journey any easier.

“Might as well get it over with,” Felix had grumbled to cover over the million butterflies fluttering about in his stomach at the thought of seeing the Agathons again. They had stayed overnight at the Provos, deciding to travel to Sharon and Helo's early the next morning. Louis was excited about seeing Helo and Sharon again. Felix was not so sure.

Penny ran ahead of them excitedly in one of the tops and shorts Nancy had found for them among Melissa's hand-me-downs. She had found Penny three outfits in all, which Louis was carrying in his pack.

They arrived at the Agathons' homestead around mid-morning. Helo and Sharon were outside harvesting some of their crops. As soon as Sharon recognized who they were, she called Hera immediately to her side, her voice strained and suspicious.

“Hoshi,” she said simply, the single, terse word her only greeting. Felix held onto Penny's hand even more tightly. He'd forgotten how scary Sharon could be when she got hostile like this. She seemed more Cylon in those moments, more cold machine.

Hera stood obediently still next to her mother. Felix's heart clenched, remembering helping Dee babysit the girl.

After a long moment with everybody standing around unsure of what to say, Helo finally broke the silence. “What are you doing here?”

Felix noticed that both the Agathons' eyes were falling with curiosity upon Penny, who drew herself closer to him as she felt herself being scrutinized. She stared at Hera, intrigued by the equally nervous child, who stood silent behind her mother's protective arm.

Louis stood beside Felix and ran a nervous hand through Penny's dark curls. “This is our daughter, Penelope,” he breathed. “But we call her Penny. We could use a little help understanding her.”

Sharon's eyes narrowed, instantly ready for disdain. “What makes you think we'd be willing to help you with anything?” Although she was answering Louis' question, she had turned her gaze squarely onto Felix.

“You want parenting lessons now, Felix?” She glared down at Penny for a moment before returning her gaze to him. “Here's an idea: try not imprisoning your daughter, like you did mine.”

“Sharon…” he began, trying to cut through her hostility and physically close the distance between them. But he saw as he moved how she reflexively clutched Hera tighter to her. He froze.

“Please,” Louis tried interacting with Helo, but he merely stood by stiffly, saying nothing, focused on protecting his wife and daughter – from a man with a prosthetic leg, half-leaning on a six-year-old girl, Louis thought in annoyance. He turned back to Sharon.

“You’re the only ones who can help us,” he said evenly. “Don't you see that? You don't see what she is?”

“What the frak are you talking about, Louis?” Sharon asked, but she was distracted momentarily into glancing down at Penny again. Both he and Felix held their breath as they saw her double take morph into understanding. She walked a few steps closer towards Penny and Felix, then gasped aloud and fell to her knees, wrapping Hera close to her, scanning Penny with her eyes. Felix saw her doing math in her mind.

“How is this even possible?” she muttered in awe, to herself more than anyone.

“What is it, Sharon?” Helo said sharply, confused by the sudden change in his wife's demeanor.

“Karl.” she choked on the word. “She's a hybrid. Like Hera.”

Helo looked unable to speak.

“Come over here, honey,” Sharon rasped, hoarse with shock. Penny looked up at Felix, uncertain.

“It's okay,” he told her. “Nobody's gonna hurt you here. I promise; go ahead.”

Penny hesitated a bit longer, then shuffled into Sharon's waiting arms, letting Sharon trace along her face with an index finger, looking back once at Louis and Felix.

“Does she know?” Sharon intoned without looking away from Penny.

“No,” Felix replied. “We just found out ourselves yesterday.”

“Do you feel like something's buzzing in your body right now?” Sharon turned back to Penny. “Like a bunch of bees inside you?”

Louis and Felix watched, transfixed, as Penny nodded.

“You've never felt that before, have you?”

The child shook her head.

“Well, that's because you've never been around your people before. You're feeling it right now because you’re near Hera and me. All three of us come from the same people.”

“What's her name again?” Sharon asked Felix and Louis.

Louis recovered first. “Penny,” he answered. “We call her Penny.”

“Don't worry, Penny,” Sharon reassured her. “That feeling is a good thing. If you learn to pay attention to it, you'll always be able to tell when your people are nearby.”

She let go of her daughter and rose to a standing position. “Hera,” she said, her eyes unreadable as they settled on Felix again. “Why don't you take Penny into the house and show her your toys?”

Hera surveyed Penny, also with her mother's unreadable expression, then stuck out her hand. Penny stared at it, unsure.

“Go on if you want,” Louis encouraged her. “We're not going anywhere.”

After a moment, Penny let Hera take her into the Agathons' domed structure as the four adults watched.

“All right,” Sharon said stiffly once the girls had disappeared, “so what do you want?”

Felix hesitated. “Hera's grown a lot since I last saw her,” he tried.

“And you have a half-Cylon child now,” she cut him off snippily. “A lot can change in a year, can't it?”

“Hey,” Helo chided and put an arm around his wife. The sight of the two of them so united reminded Felix of old resentments about the Demetrius mission that he tried not to think about anymore. He scratched at his amputated knee absently.

“What the frak do you want from us, Felix?” Sharon scowled. Felix found himself remembering lying on his rack on the Demetrius, begging Helo not to let them take his leg. He returned Sharon's scowl and he felt Louis’ hand suddenly on his arm, squeezing hard.

“We're here because Penny needs us,” Louis broke in, capturing Felix's gaze. The look in Louis' eyes was virtually a command.

“Both her parents died four months ago,” Louis continued before Felix could say anything. “She's a lot happier now than she was when she first came to us, but what about when she starts growing up? She seems like any other kid now, but what's going to change as she grows up? I don’t know what the frak I'm doing here. Neither does Felix. We don't know at all what to expect.”

Felix nodded, chastened out of his anger by Louis' plaintive tone.

“Penny shared a projection with me and I had no idea what to do,” Felix admitted. “We don't even know if that's normal. Cottle said even a glimpse of her projections shouldn't be possible.”

“Please,” Louis entreated. “You have to help us.”

“I don't have to do anything…” Sharon began, but then trailed off. Something in her gaze softened as she stared out at the crops.

“Cottle doesn't know his ass from his elbow,” she finally muttered. “Not about this.”

A tight grin passed over Helo's face at the remark. Felix felt a wave of relief pass over him.

“A human can totally share a projection with a Cylon,” she told them. “Especially if you're talking about a very young child and a human with a vivid enough imagination.”

“Yeah, it's happened between me and Hera,” Helo chimed in. “What did she project for you?” he asked Felix.

“Her parents dead on the floor of their home.”

Helo went white. “Gods.” He reached out and placed a comforting hand on Felix's shoulder. Felix tried not to visibly startle at the touch.

“A lot of the stuff that happened to Hera on the basestar is just starting to come out now,” Helo commiserated.

“Actually, the shared projections are probably a good thing,” Sharon jumped in. “You should encourage them. You might never get more than glimpses, unless you seriously train yourself to see them, but it really helped us understand more and bond with Hera in the last year.”

“Yeah, but Louis is right,” Felix sighed, worry crinkling at the corners of his eyes. “We don't know what we're doing with a half-Cylon child. I mean, what are the chances of us messing her up completely?”

“Always calculating odds, Gaeta, huh?” Her wry smile felt to Felix like the beginnings of some kind of reconciliation. “Seriously? If I had to guess, I'd say your chances are about the same as any other parent.”

--

Actually, the Agathons upped the odds in their favor by allowing Louis and Felix to bring Penny by their homestead on a regular basis. Sharon taught them games they could all play with Penny and Hera to teach the girls about projection and to show Felix and Louis how to share Penny's projections more reliably. Penny and Hera became friends after not too long, and Louis and Felix appreciated having someone around who could be a bit of a mother figure for Penny. Also, Louis was glad to see Penny have another little friend in addition to Melissa.

Things normalized enough that Felix and Louis forgot to notice when the seventh month since Penny first arrived had passed. By then, Felix and Louis had gotten good enough that they could share an image of Penny's projections. They could never really collaborate with her on conjuring the projections, but it was still fascinating to see what she would come up with, especially when they started to tell her stories about their old lives back on the Twelve Colonies. One day, Felix described the beach on the coast of Caprica City in loving detail. She rewarded him with an image of it so close to the real thing that he gasped with recognition.

One particularly hot day, the three of them decided to get some relief by trying their luck with fishing at the nearby river. Of course, it was really Louis who did the fishing, but he was glad for the company. At one point, Louis looked over to see that Felix had fallen asleep against a large rock, with Penny sitting between his outstretched legs, leaning contentedly with her back against his chest. He could tell what she was doing by the way her eyes seemed to look everywhere and yet also at nothing.

“What are you projecting this time?” he teased her. “Cookies, cake, or ice cream?”

“I'm making a present for Felix,” she told him. (Out of respect for Penny’s memories of her parents, they had not yet suggested the possibility of her calling them anything like “Daddy” or “Papa”. Which was just as well, since they totally disagreed on who should be called what anyway.)

Louis put his fishing pole down and walked over to her. The fish weren't biting anyway. “May I?” he asked her in a gentle tone. When she nodded, he took her hand in his and waited to be deluged by an imaginary feast of childish delights.

But when Louis realized exactly what he and Penny were looking at, he poked Felix in the ribs in his excitement.

“Felix!” he cried. “Look at this! Look!”

“What?” Felix’s eyes fluttered open, still filled with sleep. “Everything okay?” His arms found themselves around Penny’s shoulders and squeezed them with sleepy protectiveness.

“Look!” Louis said, delighted as he indicated the empty air before them. “It’s your house!”

Felix was very suddenly wide awake.

“Penny,” he choked, as she walked into the images she had made for him. He took her extended hand, speechless, as his daughter guided him through room after room of an expansive home with an open floor plan punctuated by random spiral staircases.

“How did you …”

His voice trailed off in amazement as she led him up a final set of stairs to the roof, where he was surrounded by the lush greenery of an architecturally impossible rooftop deck overlooking a mountainous landscape. It was every inch the dream house he'd built for her in his mind, one he'd told her about night after night, as a sort of ongoing bedtime story. She tugged at his hand as he got lost in the sheer, complex beauty of it all.

“I made it for you,” she said. Her open, expectant expression suddenly filled him with a desire to show her everything he'd had before the Attacks – the sandy beaches of his home planet, the cartoons he'd loved as a child and that she'd never get to see, the operas he'd never take her to. He'd never get to show her his lab on Galactica.

He felt a light touch caressing his back and turned to see Louis there leaning against a trellis, next to a vining plant with dozens of climbing, purple flowers. Felix smiled to see him standing there and ruefully wiped the tears that had sprang from his eyes ruefully.

“You okay, baby?” Louis asked, bending his head down to plant a kiss on Felix's lips. Felix pulled away, his thoughts torn and tumultuous.

“I …” he said, stunned. He turned back to look at Penny, who was still by the railing, framed by a staggeringly beautiful orange-red sunset of her own creation. “It's just…” he began, struggling to explain, “…it's this house. This is the house I've been designing in my head since I was a child. I drew it everywhere – in notebooks, on blackboards, in library books, even on the floors and the walls of my parents' house!

“It's just that, seeing her realize this house in front of me like this, it … it hit me …” He choked up again. “Louis, she’ll never have all the things I had as a child. All the knowledge, all the culture we’ll never be able to give her now.”

Louis blinked back surprise.

“You’re right,” he acknowledged. “It’s true. Even if I could, I wouldn't try to convince you otherwise.”

His arm went around Felix's shoulders.

“But she's got a family again, Felix. All the knowledge and culture in the world isn't worth a damn without that. And we gave that to her.”

In silent thought, Felix watched Penny leaning on the railing, her chin resting on one arm. He remembered when they'd first met her, how she'd shrank into Cottle whenever they so much as looked at her. She looked so content, so comfortable in her own skin now.

He nestled comfortably into the crook of Louis' arm. They would give her literacy, he decided, drawing up the alphabet in the damned dirt with a frakking stick, if necessary. They would tell her about art, about history, about the cities and the skyscrapers they had once known. They would tell her about their mothers and their fathers.

And one day, one day, he thought, maybe she would tell them about hers.

Fic: Experimentation (Gaeta/Baltar - PG)

millarific — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:18:51 GMT

Title: Experimentation
Author: millari
Characters: Baltar, Gaeta, implied Starbuck
Pairing: Gaeta/Baltar
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Wordcount: 811
Summary: “No, Gaius,” he raises his eyebrows and says with a little too much emphasis, but it should get the job done. “She's not really my type, if you know what I mean.”
Author's Note: Done for the bsg_epics Shipper War Challenge. Inspired by a prompt from the lovely geekbynight.

“You know, Starbuck isn't the type to get heartbroken over,” Felix blurts out as they walk back from the epic card game where Lee Adama has just taken all their cubits.

Felix knows as soon as the words come out of his mouth that he would never dare to say anything like this to Doctor Baltar if he weren't drunk as all hell. Luckily, the esteemed Doctor is currently just as drunk as Felix, if not drunker.

“What?” Baltar's voice rips through the quiet hum of the hallways at this time of night. It's the overnight shift, and Felix has to work in the morning, and what he should really be doing is going straight to bed.

“What are you talking about?” Baltar repeats, sounding somewhere between alarmed and embarrassed, and Felix now knows that his guesses are right. He knows what he saw last night at the Colonial Day dance, and at this card game tonight.

Felix shrugs trying to appear nonchalant, but he suspects the alcohol buzzsawing a hole through his brain right now is making the move come off wrong. He really needs to stop this little clinical experiment in flirting. But his mouth has other ideas.

“I know you're still new around here,” he continues, “but surely you've noticed by now that Starbuck's the one-night-stand type. Plus she's got this frakked-up unrequited love thing going on with Lee Adama anyway. Neither of them really look at anyone else.”

They round the corner. Only one more hallway until they reach the lab and Doctor Baltar's quarters, where Felix will have to drop him off. The Doctor isn't saying anything, and Felix wonders if he hasn't overstepped.

I look at you, he wants to say out loud now, before they must part ways and Felix will continue on to his own rack alone. But his mouth is strangely uncooperative when it comes to these words, and so a noncomittal hm is all Felix gets so far from the doctor. He can already see the lab in the distance.

“How exactly do you happen to know all this, Mister Gaeta?” Baltar finally breaks the silence. “Is this knowledge about Lieutenant Thrace based on personal experience?” He asks the question in a way that Felix suspects was meant to be a haughty challenge, or maybe something lascivious. But the alcohol is either making his execution or Felix's perception of it all wrong. Felix can't help but grin at the lopsided, overcompensating nature of it.

In fact, it puts Felix in such a good mood, he dares just a little bit more. They're nearly at the lab, after all, so it's now or never.

He shakes his head a little too vigorously, hoping his brain still has enough cells to convey with any subtlety just how impossible it would be for him to have personal knowledge of – or interest in – Starbuck's romantic side.

“No, Gaius,” he raises his eyebrows and says with a little too much emphasis, but it should get the job done. “She's not really my type, if you know what I mean.”

His use of the man's first name – the only time he has ever dared say it out loud – seems to have gotten his attention in a hurry. But Felix's little lab experiment has not factored in the effects of the alcohol on his target, and so after a confused moment of staring, the doctor evidently decides to come back with harmless banter.

“Oh,” he slurs a bit. “Too ah, er … athletic?”

Felix shakes his head, frustrated. But he merely absorbs the results and adjusts his methods: He places a hand on Baltar's shoulder and more or less directs the man's gaze straight onto him. This should finally clarify things: “No, Gaius,” he uses his name again. “Not too athletic. Too female.”

Felix can see the understanding dawn far too sluggishly on the man's face. But then to Felix's relief, dawning intensifies into a bright sunny day that positively beams with radiance. “Oh!” he exclaims.

Not exactly a Magnate Award-winning response, but Felix is just happy that he's finally got it. Tomorrow he'll worry about whether this little experiment was a supremely bad idea.

Then Gaius Baltar blinks at him. “You know, Mister Ga-, ah, Felix ...” he says carefully, precisely. He places his hand on Felix's opposite shoulder and smiles. “There's something here in the lab I believe you'd be interested to ah … examine. Won't you come in?”

It's all very clumsy and obvious. But Felix realizes tonight is a night for clumsy and obvious. And who knows where clumsy and obvious might lead them tomorrow and the next day. Felix is pretty sure he can live with whatever clinical results his trials end up revealing.

millarific — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 22:47:42 GMT

Title: Lay Down Your Burdens
Author: millari
Characters: Baltar, Gaeta
Pairing: Baltar/Gaeta
Rating: G
Wordcount: 750
Warnings: None
Summary: I could help you out of that, he imagined himself saying, a seductive growl in his voice.
Author's Note: Done for the bsg_epics Shipper War Challenge. Inspired by a prompt from geekbynight.

They don't say much on these smoke breaks, but Felix considers the small routine that he has managed to develop between them a minor victory.

Also a minor victory? The fact that he doesn't choke anymore on these little brown cigarettes Gaius favors. It took Felix a week of practicing in the rec room before Reveille until he dared pull out his bent, reused soft pack of Caprican Imperials he called in two favors for. The Doctor had looked surprised when Felix asked him if he minded company, but he had never questioned the sudden appearance of Felix's habit, and with a nod of assent was born a treasured ritual.

For Felix anyway. He wasn't sure what Doctor Baltar thought of it. He smoked mostly in moody silence, his lab coat wide open and askew, falling off his shoulders like someone had been in the process of worrying it off him; it made Felix think impure thoughts.

I could help you out of that, he imagined himself saying, a seductive growl in his voice. But he didn't dare. He still couldn't tell if the disheveled scientist was just oblivious and in need of a strong cue, or if he was deliberately ignoring Felix's overtures. They'd been doing this dance for weeks now.

“How are you holding up these days?” he asks one day, desperate for a topic to break the silence that has settled over them after only half a cigarette.

The Doctor's eyes narrow. “Holding up?” he asks with an intensity that suggests that either Felix has hit a nerve, or that he thinks Felix's question is embarrassing. “What do you mean?”

Felix cringes. What does he mean? “Well, I was just thinking about how it's been one thing and another for you lately. There was all that pressure to test the Colonel's wife, I mean. Then the raid on the tylium refinery. And well there was also ...” He almost hesitates to mention it. “... the Shelley Godfrey thing.”

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “I just meant that there's been a lot of stress on you lately."

Gods, this wasn't exactly ideal flirting material. “I'm sorry,” he blurts out, desperate to repair the damage but not sure how to do so. “I shouldn't have said anything. I'm sure you don't want to be reminded of all that.” Stupid, stupid, stupid

There is dead silence for a long moment, and Felix thinks he is about to be told off quite firmly. But instead, Doctor Baltar cocks his head with what seems like new awareness. “No, don't be sorry,” he reassures, his voice sounding more focused now, more patrician, and more, Felix thinks, intrigued. “It's nice to have the stress acknowledged, actually.” He takes a long drag and exhales it upward. “Did you ever notice that no one says thank you around here? They just act like it's all expected of you and then ask you to take on even more.”

He's got a point, Felix has to admit.

“Well, it's a military ship,” he explains. “We're kind of used to being ordered around without much thanks involved. But I can see how you'd feel differently.”

They're down to the stubs of their cigarettes. As he focuses his gaze on putting his out in their makeshift ashtray, Felix spools up his mental FTL drives and suggests carefully, "You know, if you're ever in need of a bit of um, stress relief ...”

He doesn't dare look up until he hears the flicker of surprise, then interest in the Doctor's reply.

“Is that so, Mister Gaeta?” Felix looks up to see the traces of a smirk there. “You know,” he continues in that careful, diffident voice he uses when discussing a surprising lab finding. “I believe I could use some stress relief.” A beat passes. “Perhaps you would care to discuss this further.”

“Yes,” Felix says, feeling giddy with excitement as he realizes this is actually happening. “I would, in fact.”

Still ever casual, the Doctor's smirk widens a little. “Excellent. Well then, how about this evening, after your shift ends in the CIC, you report back here, and we can discuss your … stress-relief methods.”

Felix struggles not to turn red, and fails, but he doesn't care. He's just propositioned Gaius Baltar, and Gaius Baltar has said yes. For this stolen moment anyway, all feels right with the universe.

Fic: You Made a Slow Disaster of Me (Gaeta/Baltar - G)

millarific — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 21:05:26 GMT

Title: You Made a Slow Disaster Out of Me
Author: millari
Characters: Baltar, Gaeta
Pairing: Baltar/Gaeta
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Wordcount: 370
Summary: They both know what Felix is giving up here and now to send Gaius to the airlock.
Author's Note: This was written for the bsg_epics Shipper War Challenge Inspired by a prompt by the ever-wonderful geekbynight, whose multitude of prompts inspired a bunch of writing.

In the witness box at the trial of Gaius Baltar, Felix is not ready for the man himself to speak.

Gaius has uttered precious few words during his trial. In fact, he has been silent every moment for which Felix has been present. So Felix's memories of Gaius' voice have to come from when Felix interrogated him in his cell. His words then had been loud, harsh, baiting.

They make Gaius' outraged shouts at Felix's testimony (What are you talking about? You weren't there!) easy to deal with. It is the soft, plaintive words (Oh Felix, Felix … What are you doing?) that hit him the hardest.

They both know what Gaius's question means. They both know what Felix is giving up of himself here and now to send Gaius to the airlock. The shared understanding between them forms a momentary, confusing bond that Felix desperately does not want. Rattled, he almost loses his nerve. He's actually relieved when Gaius stops trying to understand and just gives in to his baser impulses, turning bitchy and aggressive. (You missed, butterfingers!) This is at least familiar territory.

He makes a point of staring straight at Gaius several times during his testimony, drinking in his ex-lover's shocked, infuriated, but ultimately helpless stare. Though Gaius surely knew that Felix was on the prosecution's witness list, Felix can tell that he didn't see this coming at all. The fact that he's finally broken the man's silence tells Felix that for Gaius, the sense of betrayal has been intensely personal.

Good, he thinks bitterly. Now you finally understand.

It's only as the Admiral dismisses him from the stand that Felix realizes what he and Gaius have enacted in that courtoom just now – Gaius so emotional, Felix unable to keep his eyes off him, Gaius so exasperated that he actually mocked Felix for not doing a good enough job at killing him.

Intensely personal. A knock-down, drag-out, high-stakes lover's quarrel, staged in the middle of open court. His victory crumbles to dust in clenched fists as it dawns on him that what he thought would recover his sense of honor has only served to dissipate it more.

It's a long, hollow walk to his shift in the CIC.

Fic: It Doesn't Feel Like Cheating (Gaeta/Baltar - PG-13)

millarific — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 20:30:11 GMT

Title: It Doesn't Feel Like Cheating
Author: millari
Characters: Gaeta, Baltar, implied OFC
Pairing: Baltar/Gaeta
Rating: PG-13 (for non-graphic depictions of sex)
Wordcount: 570
Warnings: Incredibly frustrating infidelity that will make you want to punch Gaius Baltar in the face (if you didn't already).
Summary: The one-sided, step-by-step dissolution of a relationship.
Author's Note: This was written for the bsg_epics Shipper War Challenge. Prompted by the wonderful geekbynight.

It doesn't feel like cheating, when his newest intern – a fetching brunette who can barely type - catches him watching her bustle about the office, and throws back a lascivious smile. He watches her file a minute. It's nothing but harmless flirting, he tells himself.

It doesn't feel like cheating when he sends Felix off to yet another round of intractable union negotiations, fully aware that it's her shift again in an hour. If he's planning anything, it's just to look. He isn't planning anything. He isn't.

It doesn't feel like cheating when she perches herself on his desk to ask him some questions about the directions he just gave her. Nor when he notices she's not wearing anything under her skirt; he's not blind, after all.

It doesn't feel like cheating when she's gasping through an orgasm, underneath him on his bed. It feels amazing.

It still doesn't feel like cheating when she's smoking one of his cigarillos, skirt still hiked up around her hips. No, it's not cheating if he already can't remember her name.

It only starts to feel like cheating when Felix arrives three hours later, tired and exhausted, but proud and happy about a significant breakthrough in the union talks. After looking around to make sure they're alone, he gleefully pushes Gaius into the chair and kisses him deeply. His kisses taste strangely like ash.

It starts to feel like cheating when he realizes his intern (Lily, he's found out almost against his will) is making a point of throwing him significant looks, specifically when Felix is around. He spends half his time casting terrified glances back and forth between the two of them.

Yet it doesn't feel like cheating when they frak again, because this time, he only allows her to give him a blow job. He's not sure why, but this conditional nature to the sex helps.

But when Felix is working in his office and Gaius tells her that it has to end between them – only to have Felix walk back in just as she says, go frak yourself - that's when it definitely feels like he's been cheating all along.

It feels even more so when his lover's eyes turn stricken, and Gaius can only watch as he packs an overnight bag, grunting that he'll get the rest of his things tomorrow.

After that, it feels so much like cheating that it seems redundant when Felix actually names it, in a tone so very sad and quiet and full of assurances that he won't let this interfere with their work. It feels so redundant in fact, that Gaius lets this annoy him, and soon he begins the work of reinventing himself as a victim of Felix's expectations.

Three months later, when Felix is waking him from another night spent in a stupor at his desk, he reaches for his pills to block out Felix's prattling about the union that should have been broken months ago, while Lily emerges from his bedroom like a smug, decadent, half-clothed sentry. A bored Gaius doesn't bother to look at her, but he does light her cigarillo, briefly pleased at the way the act instantly reduces Felix's implied accusations to a blessedly stony silence.

No, he assures himself as he watches Felix turn on his heel in disdain - it was never cheating at all.

Fic: Sketches from the Journal of a Dead Man (Gaeta, Baltar - G)

millarific — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 14:24:00 GMT

Title: Sketches From the Journal of a Dead Man
Author: millari
Characters: Baltar, Gaeta
Pairing: implied Gaeta/Baltar
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Wordcount: 600
Summary: On New Caprica, Gaeta plays a private but deadly game.
Author's Note: This was written for the community's Shipper War Challenge Inspired by a prompt by the lovely selphish.

The Cylons left the core of Colonial One with no more answers than when their meeting had started. They filed past Gaius' desk one by one, expressions ranging from grim to annoyed. Only he and Felix were left behind to contemplate their existence in this glorified prison.

Felix, as usual, avoided his gaze, as he often did when his job didn't require him to interact with the President. Gaius watched his chief of staff and former lover, body curled like a question mark over his legal pad, scribbling something with great intention into the margins. Gaius sighed. There was a time when Felix would have been the one watching him, he thought, with rapt attention no less. At the moment, however, Felix didn't even seem to even remember that he was there.

“Why do you bother?” he broke the silence, voice dripping with enough sarcasm to cover the bittersweet nostalgia.

Felix's head startled upward, his expression hunted as he briefly focused on Gaius, then looked back down at his pad. “Bother with what?”

“You do know that they make you take those notes just to keep you feeling like you have a role.”

Felix's features twisted in annoyance as his gaze dove back down over the pad, in a way that was so familiar, yet so unsatisfying at the same time. “Since when do you care in the least about anything I do?” he replied, an evenness to his tone that Gaius couldn't decide whether it was depressing or maddening. Maddening seemed the more desirable option. At least there was agency in that.

He let his voice adopt a deliberate sneer. “Do you really think they ever look at your little sheets of paper once you file them away, Felix?” He hoped the man would rise to the bait. Even a screaming match would be better than this wall of nothingness between them ever since the occupation. But as usual, Felix retreated into silence, his only reply the sound of his pen scratching loudly, angrily against the pad, a resolute dismissal. It made Gaius itch for a fight.

He propelled himself out of his chair and closed the space between them, his words goading and aggressive. “Give here,” he ordered, grabbing the pad out of his hands before Felix could catch up. "What the frak do you even write on there anyway?”

Felix snatched back at it, like the victim of a schoolyard game of keep-away-the-Pyramid-ball. The moment of panic in Felix's eyes only bolstered Gaius' resolve that he was finally getting somewhere. All bets were off though when his gaze fell upon the contents in the pad's margins. He gasped, stunned.

At the edges of a set of perfectly unremarkable notes, hidden in the margins, was an excellent and tiny likeness of a Cavil in mid-rant, miniscule arms spread wide, catching a hail of tiny black bullets in his chest, coming from somewhere off the page. Gaius stood there, unable to take his eyes off it.

The moment of shock gave Felix enough time to snatch the pad back with a scowl. “Of course they don't read them,” he said. He ripped the pages off his pad, his tone clipped and bitter, and gave Gaius a real chance to meet his gaze for the first time. His eyes held the vacant expression of a man who thought himself already dead. “If they ever do, I'm sure I'll be the first to know.”

2012 BSG Remix Fic: Exit Music For A Planet (The Sign Here Remix)

millarific — Sat, 05 May 2012 16:41:25 GMT

Title: Exit Music for A Planet (The Sign Here Remix)
Author: millari
Characters: Gaeta, Baltar, Zarek
Pairing: Gaeta/Baltar
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: rimming, light BDSM
Summary: Four times Felix Gaeta got President Baltar to sign something on New Caprica (and one time he didn't).
Beta Thanks: usakeh and the ever lovely trovia
Author Notes: Done for the 2012 bsg_remix. Title/Author of Original Story: Seeds I Plant Will Grow by hobbit_kate Thanks to hobbit_kate for participating in this remix and giving me an excuse to explore more of her fic!

**
“... Mister President, we've got quite a full agenda this morning.”

Gaius Baltar, dressed impeccably in a black suit jacket, straightens his tie and greets his chief of staff with an efficient but friendly smile. “Good morning, Mister Gaeta,” he says, reminding Gaeta to go through the pleasantries before just getting down to business. “You're up early.”

Gaeta doesn't bother to state the obvious – that the President is up even earlier. He's always up earlier than everyone, claiming that first daylight is the perfect time to get the most odious tasks out of the way …
**

1. An Appeal to Patriotism

“She's just going to turn the children of this settlement against me, you know.”

Felix rolls his eyes with a grin. “Really, Gaius? That's your argument? You really think Laura Roslin wants to start a school to ruin your chances of future re-election?”

He's turning out to be a pretty good president, but Gaius has this weird bias against his former boss, Laura Roslin. Felix never has gotten the courage up to ask why, exactly.

“Well, perhaps not consciously,” Gaius admits after a moment.

Felix presses his advantage and pushes the document in front of him across the desk. Gaius sits slightly slumped in the plush leather chair of the President. It's the end of the day, and the light is fading fast through the small portholes of Colonial One. Felix notes how the shadows cast his lover's face into an light that makes him look weary, and reaches over to run a sympathetic, affectionate thumb against Gaius' jawline. Gaius smiles at him and raises his eyebrows suggestively. Felix merely chuckles.

Sometimes he can't believe that after all this time of pining after him, Gaius has turned out to love him back. Nor can he believe that this crazy dream he has followed down to New Caprica has all worked out far better than he could have hoped for.

You're on the job right now, he chides himself. Focus.

“You don't have to like her to sign this,” he insists with new resolve. “Just think of it as for the kids, not her, all right?” He carefully places Gaius' favorite pen at the base of the document, somehow hoping it will be an inducement. But Gaius only folds his arms in closed-off annoyance.

“Oh for frak's sake, why does everybody always pull that argument out – think of the children – as if it's a full colors hand?” He scowls. “That woman tried to steal an election. I thought you of all people would take my side on this.”

“I'm on the people's side,” Felix replies patiently. “Come on, Gaius. It's a school. A tent with whatever classroom materials we can scrounge up. Tom is in favor of this. I'm in favor of it.”

“I'm all in favor of a school, Felix. But surely we can find someone more suitable.”

“More suitable than the former minister of education?” He raises his eyebrows. Gaius says nothing.

“All we have left is the Pegasus' knowledge database and the minds of the remaining populace,” he presses, “who I might remind you, have declined in number each year.”

Gaius sighs and pulls out one of his little brown cigarettes from a box on his desk. On auto-pilot, Felix's hand flies into his jacket pocket and pulls out a lighter. He watches the man light the cigarette and take a slow, satisfied first drag, and he senses an opening.

“Just think about if you had never been born on Caprica, Gaius, with all the opportunities to be educated. Think about the valuable mind we would have lost, how we might not have survived the Cylon attacks. Now think about when you die? Who's going to be the next Gaius Baltar?”

Something that was well … Presidential in Gaius's face lights up at that.

“It's imperative that we start educating our children as quickly as possible,” he insists, “before we lose more precious, irretrievable information.”

Gaius scoffs quietly into his glass, and Felix fears for a moment that he has oversold it. “I'm not sure this school is all that, love,” he murmurs into the next drag.

But to Felix's relief, he blows out a long draught of smoke, then picks up the pen.

**
“... Don't forget that you have the People's Council meeting today at 1400 hours. They're expecting an update on the state of the apartment complex,” Gaeta begins, and President Baltar adds with a nod: “We've got the builder's union at 1100 as well, no? I hope you got around to those food estimates, by the way. I'll need them for the negotiations. We can't give awayall the rations to the union, now can we?”

“No, sir.” Gaeta suppresses a small smile, having just noticed that the President has a pencil stuck behind his ear. Felix finds it endearing. Really, he can't believe how much he is still seriously attracted to the man. He had thought seeing Gaius Baltar every single day talking about mundane politics would finally cure him of this one-sided crush, but it hasn't. Still, Felix knows the smart thing is to keep things in check, and never let on. The sexual tension it would introduce into their work relationship would be such a bad idea.

“Anything else?” Baltar asks, impatient to return to his report ...
**

2. The Hard Facts

“What am I even doing here?” Gaius whispers hoarsely through the biting cold, huddling closer into his long, formal trenchcoat. “How did I ever let you convince me to come all the way out here in the dead of night like this?”

What else, the promise of sex, Felix snarks inwardly. Frankly, he is pleasantly surprised that his ruse has even worked. He is pretty sure the last time that Gaius has gone outside of Colonial One was at the apartment groundbreaking ceremony four months ago.

“We've been together now for five months, and you have never once come to see where I live.” Felix sets his shoulders back with manufactured righteousness. In truth, Felix prefers sex with Gaius on Colonial One: it's a lot more comfortable, and when Gaius gets frustrating to deal with, Felix likes being able to get away and having his own tent to go to. But tonight, he has a plan.

“I'm putting my foot down,” he declares into the slight wind that has picked up during the night. “If you want sex tonight, we're doing it here.”

Gaius' murmured complaints snake their way through the winding path of endless, identical, olive drab tents. When they somehow reach Felix's, he holds the flap open for Gaius with ironic gallantry.

“This is how you live?” Gaius blinks with undisguised horror as Felix sparks the tylium lantern alight and the sparse accommodations appear before his eyes.

“It's how everybody lives, Gaius,” he says pointedly. “Everybody except you and Tom.”

Felix sees his mouth twist with surprise in the flickering light. Good, he thinks as he opens the ore stove and stokes the coals back into action, thawing his hands over the radiant heat. Maybe he's getting the picture. “Come,” he cajoles Gaius, who still stands near the tent's entrance, reluctant. “The stove's still giving off some warmth; it'll get better soon.”

Gaius shuffles across the dirt floor. “It's like a bloody icebox in here,” he hisses. “You truly expect me to take off my clothes under these conditions?”

Feeling emboldened on his home turf, Felix grabs him and pulled him into a proprietary kiss that makes clear what he thinks about the matter.

In the end, Gaius does take off his clothes, in a fevered, enthusiastic rush to possess Felix's body, even though Felix can feel small shivers that he is pretty sure aren't Gaius' arousal. Taken out of his own element, Gaius is just slightly thrown off – a little less confident, a little more open to moves Felix wants to try. And the conditions have the added benefit of Gaius curling up in his arms under the blankets afterward, trying to stay warm.

“All right, I'll admit,” Gaius says spontaneously after they have lain together a while enjoying the post-coital bliss. “The change of venue was a good idea, for one night anyway.” He kisses Felix's shoulder.

Felix nibbles at his ear. “Yes, well, you get to go back to Colonial One,” he says softly. “But for the thousands of people you brought here, this is their daily lives.”

Gaius harrumphs disagreeably and pulls away. Damn, Felix thinks. Too much. Now he's defensive.

“We have to get going on those apartment buildings,” he says quickly, trying to capitalize on what might be left of Gaius' good will. “It's going to get even colder soon.”

“Love,” Gaius objects, “I keep telling you: that one's not my fault. What am I supposed to do if the labor union hands me a bad faith contract to sign?”

“The only concession they're asking for is more food,” Felix retorts, realizing that they are going to have this argument now, like it or not, and there is nothing he can do about it. “They're going to be working twelve-hour shifts to get those buildings up. That requires strength. It's not exactly unreasonable to demand a little more food than the rest of the population while they do that.”

“It's extortion, is what it is,” Gaius grumbles, and Felix knows for sure he's lost him. “I won't give into it. We'll be depriving others.”

Felix can't help the angry, frustrated sigh. Winter is coming. “Yes, but only for a couple of months, and I guarantee you the people will think it's worth it if they have warm homes to sleep in this winter. Those apartments could still go up before the cold really settles in, if we start now.”

“We still have time,” Gaius assures him. “In fact, I'm glad you brought me here tonight, even though I know I resisted it at first.”

Felix stares at him through the flickering light. “You are?”

“Yes, I am. I'll admit that I've been rather cut off from the populace as of late. But this ...” He casts his glance around to indicate the tent. “... this is valuable ammunition in our battle with Tyrol's union.”

“Our ...? Felix echoes in astonishment. “I've been telling you to give them the concessions all along ...”

Gaius plants an enthusiastic, almost manic kiss square on Felix's lips. “Don't you see?” he says with something akin to glee in his voice. “Now that I know what it's like here, I can see how the builders can't afford to wait.”

“We can't afford to wait,” comes Felix's crisp correction, but it's almost immediately immured within Gaius' oblivious rambling.

“The builders live here too,” he continues on, “so they know all too well the deadline they're facing before winter comes. They must know they can't obstruct negotiations much longer. Don't you see? Their capitulation is inevitable!”

Felix's expression turns hostile. “This is insane.” He rises up to a sitting position, sloughing Gaius off his body. “You have to sign that contract. People are going to start dying soon.”

“You do have a flair for the melodramatic sometimes,” he smiles as if Felix hasn't said anything worth listening to. “And you worry too much. We just have to hold our ground a bit longer. The union won't have any choice but to give up their demands.” He bolts up out of the bed and makes a search for his trousers. “Tell me,” he says as he does them up, “exactly where is the head around here?”

Wordless with anger, Felix points in the general direction of the outdoor latrine. “There's a solar night light at the top,” he finally manages. “You can't miss it.”

And then he is gone, and Felix is left still processing what just happened, all his best plans mislaid. Furious with Gaius, with himself, he bangs his head in self-castigation against the post of his cot. What the frak was he going to do now? Gaius would be more stubbornly resolute than ever. And what if Tyrol was counting on the same capitulation in Gaius and they both ended up waiting for each other to cave – until winter came and people started dying?

He lies back down in the shivering cold, the blanket thrown off his naked body like a subconscious penance. Why can't he make any of them see reason?

He hears the rustle of the tent flap all too soon.

“Felix!” Gaius' urgent whisper filters through his consciousness, but Felix doesn't bother to open his eyes.

“Yeah, what do you want?”

There is a barely perceptible pause before he answers. “Where's the real head?” he hisses.

“What?” he murmurs. “What are you talking about?”

“All I could find was the temporary one, you know the kind you find on a construction site. Where's the real one?”

Felix's eyes flash open. “The real one? That is the real one. There's only one.”

He can almost feel the weight of dismay in Gaius' voice in the dark. “Surely you can't be serious.”

“Of course I'm serious.”

“But it's a hole in the ground.”

“It's a field latrine, Gaius. What did you expect?”

A moment of silence passes. “Well …” he hesitates. “... I can't use it.”

Felix snorts in annoyance. “Well, it's your only choice.”

“But it's a hole in the ground!”

“Haven't you ever taken a piss behind a building before? What's the big deal?”

Another bout of silence. “That's not the business I need to take care of,” he says pointedly.

“Oh.” The issue finally registers for him. Felix doesn't know whether to laugh or be annoyed. “Well, what do you expect me to do about it?”

“Well, what do you do in this situation?”

Felix rolls his eyes in the darkness. “I use the latrine.”

“This is really the only choice?” Gaius asks in obvious disbelief. “Squatting over a hole in the ground in the middle of the night?”

Felix exhales with a weary sigh. “Yeah, well, welcome to life in New Caprica City, Gaius.”

Gaius grunts. “Well, this is intolerable. I'm off to Colonial One and a real head.” He draws on his trenchcoat and buttons it up all the way to the collar. He turns back and glances at Felix, still lying on the cot. “Come back with me,” he suggests. “It's inhumane here. There's no reason for you to live like this. I'm sure we can find you a room in Colonial One.”

Felix closes his eyes again. Definitely annoyed, he decides. “To be honest, Gaius, I'd really rather not.”

A final bit of silence. “Oh.” The word drops before them like an anvil. “I see.” But Felix has no sympathy for Gaius right now; he just wants him to leave. He folds his arms across his chest and says nothing until he hears the soft thud of the tent flap falling closed.

He lies there in the darkness for a good couple of hours, his mind racing with worry about the union negotiations, about whether they have managed to grow enough food to last them until spring, about winter kicking in, and about if he's made a huge mistake getting involved with Gaius Baltar.

This last worry in particular nags at him in the morning light as he trudges through the familiar muddy pathways towards Colonial One.

They never talk about the two-page document Felix finds waiting for him on his desk, signed with Gaius' usual imperious flourish. Felix just makes sure to get the rations to Tyrol's men before Gaius changes his mind.

In retrospect, Felix could see how it was the beginning of the end.

**
“ ...Well, there is a small supply issue.” Gaeta checks off another item on his clipboard. “It's not a problem yet, but it will be soon.”

“Well, let's hear it. You know my policy: Bad news first.”

“Well, sir, I know you don't like to have to bother Admiral Adama when we can manage well enough on our own, but I think you're going to want to see this.” He turns the clipboard upside down and hands it over to the President ...
**

3. Sex

Gaius can't believe Felix has never suggested this before, in all the eight months that they've been together now. It's amazing - the feel of his lover's soft, wet tongue circling round the rim of his anus, Felix's strong, warm hands spreading his cheeks open – it's utterly intoxicating. They haven't had sex like this in months.

Some days he wishes he had never seen this planet - the tedious politics, the endless demands on his time and attention, the constant anger directed at him no matter what he did. Some days he wishes he had never listened to Tom's proposal that he run for President.

But not today.

He whimpers with desperate need as Felix removes his tongue. A finger, slick with cold lube, pushes inside him, slow and inexorable, hesitating at the entrance. “Anything I want?” Felix confirms.

Gaius groans at the very idea that he might withdraw now.

“Yes, yes!” he cries. “Oh God, yes. Just please, don't stop!”

“You beg far more prettily than I would have guessed.” There's something cold in that praise that Gaius can't quite place, but right now he doesn't care to explore it. Right now, his chief of staff has him tied to his own bed, spread-eagled and kneeling on the sheets, blindfolded and utterly helpless. For once, he feels utterly devoid of power and responsibility, and it is oddly glorious.

This was the deal they made, half-jokingly at first, until Gaius kept pushing to make it serious, until Felix got over his initial haughtiness about it, and was able to see how it was a win-win situation for the both of them. Gaius doesn't even remember what Felix might want from him, but it doesn't really matter, because the way Felix is stroking into him now, pushing his finger in ever deeper and twisting, he supposes he would have agreed to almost anything.

Another finger is added, the thrusts both swift and sure and constant, and Gaius thinks he might come then and there, but just as he's truly close, Felix's fingers stop and scissor open with unexpected strength, spreading him even more open, so that Gaius can feel the hint of a cold draft against his sphincter. His muscles contract and he cries out again, pushing back into Felix's hand, desperate to come, silently pleading for release.

“Anything I want?” Felix repeats, and Gaius can hear him kneeling down. A second later, his tongue is there again, warm and wet, taking miniscule strokes over exposed spots that are so sensitive, Gaius can't even think straight, doesn't want to think straight.

“For frak's sake,” he growls in impatience. “Make me come already, will you?”

Felix doesn't say anything more, which suits Gaius just fine. It's less to concentrate on as Felix starts up again, his fingers pushing up inside him with rough determination now. The combination of the velvet warmth of the lube and the merciless thrusts is so perfect, Gaius knows he will give Felix any sexual favor he wants in return, even if it doesn't do anything for him at all.

He comes in the total darkness of the blindfold, his climax heralded by an almost inhuman, high-pitched whine from the back of his throat. He is a shuddering, exploding mess, and his body slams several times against all four ropes until he collapses into them in total, exhausted submission.

“Remember, you promised.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” he pants. “Whatever you want.” He feels the blindfold ripped off him, and his wrists quickly untied, and to his shock, a paper on a clipboard is placed carefully in front of him.

“Oh you must be joking,” he half-laughs, half-complains as he sees the letter to Adama begging for more medical supplies. “I told you I wouldn't sign that.”

“Anything I wanted, you said,” Felix reminds him, his expression closed off and efficient. In a flash of shock and chagrin, Gaius finally understands how things are between them now.

His breaths coming out hoarse and shallow, he signs, eager to get it over with.

**
“... Well, if we've got to ask him, we've got to ask him,” the President says, after looking over Felix's briefing. “We can't put my pride ahead of the people's safety.”

“Of course not, Mister President. ...”
**

4. Nostalgia

Felix closes the curtain behind him.

“Not what you expected, is he?”

He startles at the sight of Tom Zarek unexpectedly before him, leaning against the bulkhead like the cat who ate the canary, a smug witness to Felix's humiliation.

“Mr. Vice-President,” he greets with as much cold disdain as he can muster in his surprise. Zarek had made it extremely clear months ago what he thought of Felix for sleeping with Gaius. The two men haven't shared more than a few sentences that weren't absolutely necessary ever since.

“We both know procuring whores for Baltar isn't what you signed up for, Felix.” Zarek's voice is confident yet jaded, and Felix realizes how much it reminds him of his own. It didn't use to be that way. New Caprica has ground a weariness into both men.

“You're the one who procured her,” he snaps, embarrassed. “I'm just the … butler.” He doesn't want to be having this conversation at all. “What do you want?”

“He needs to sign that order, allow people back on the ships,” Zarek says calmly. He's bound and determined to press this point forever, Felix thinks, as if he doesn't really understand that there's no way that Gaius will agree to it. A dozen shouting matches between the three of them haven't changed anything, so he doesn't know why Zarek thinks that plotting with Felix behind Gaius' back will either.

“What makes you think I can convince him?” By which they both know he means: We don't frak anymore. I might as well be invisible unless he wants booze or pills or women.

“I know you can't,” Zarek says, imperturbable, all business. “But you could let him sign it later tonight, when he's more … receptive.” He glances towards the curtain, and Felix wonders if this had been Zarek's plan all along.

For a moment, they let the idea sit between them.

“Are you crazy?” Felix finally hisses. “That's a coup!”

Zarek sighs, with an inevitable air, as if he's waiting for Felix to grow up.

“I'll be here when you change your mind.”

Felix's expression conveys exactly what he knows it should at the proposition – outrage, disbelief. But he knows that for a moment, a dangerous moment, he did consider it.

His moral resolve comes through gritted teeth. “I won't.There are some things I won't do.”

“Haven't you already?” Zarek shrugs and begins walking towards the exit. They both know Gaius will be too occupied the rest of the night to need either of them for anything. He pauses at the doorway, a warning thrown over his shoulder. “You know we can't go on like this much longer, Gaeta.”

Felix falls into one of the room's sofas, trying to decide whether the rare opportunity for uninterrupted work time is worth having to overhear the sounds of Gaius and that woman frakking. He closes his eyes with a sigh. “Good night, Mr. Vice-President.”

Zarek shuts the door to Colonial One behind him without a word.

“You've got to be kidding!” Felix hears a sharp female voice rising from the bedroom. “I just got here!”

Before Felix can extricate himself from the sofa, Gaius is there in the room, hustling the honey-blonde out by the arm, his voice rasped from drink and cigarettes. He seems to be refusing to look at her, and his words are strangely choked, as if holding back some strong emotion.

“It's a very nice offer, I'm sure,” he manages, continuing to push her towards the exit. “But I'm afraid I'll have to decline.”

By the time they reach the doorway, the woman shakes him off in disgust, straightens up, and pushes back her shoulder-length, slightly waved ringlets, and Felix gets a good look at her: She is fairly pretty – tall, long-legged, a narrow, angular face like a fashion model's. She even looks vaguely familiar, although Felix can't quite put his finger on where he might have seen her before. At any rate, he's surprised: she should have been a no-questions conquest for Gaius. Felix has certainly seen less-attractive women pass successfully through that curtain.

Her gaze falls upon him sitting on the sofa. “What are you looking at?” she spits, an obvious attempt to regain her dignity. Her angrily clicking heels are the only sound in the room as she takes her leave.

He looks back at Gaius, who startles as if embarrassed to have Felix witness this. “Mister Gaeta,” he mutters the name without any real intention behind it, and goes back to the credenza for the bottle of ambrosia.

Felix watches him pour and feels the anger rising within him. He can't resist the bitter jab:

“Well, that was quick,” he mocks. “So what was wrong with her? Not young enough? Not blonde enough?”

“Too blonde, actually,” Gaius cuts him off between sips. Felix doesn't know what to make of an actual reply, and is startled into silence. “Bad associations,” Gaius elaborates, but it doesn't really explain much.

He gulps down the whole glass of straight ambrosia with a pained expression as it goes down. “Where the frak did Tom find her, anyway? She was so thin she looked like she would break if I touched her – like a frakking prisoner of war.”

“That's because she was hungry,” Felix says, unable not to go there, even though he knows it will do no good. “Everybody's hungry nowadays, and it's only going to get worse. We need to accept that this planet is a failed experiment and make preparations to return to the Fleet ...”

“New Caprica is not a failure!” Gaius exclaims, alcohol sloshing perilously at the edges of his glass, his voice one part emphatic and two parts hysterical. “I promised the people soil beneath their feet! I promised them a new beginning! I won't betray them!”

The man stumbles towards his desk. He sits in the chair, a morose expression on his face as he slides his body forward and lays his head down.

Felix blinks in shock at the outburst. “Get some sleep, Mister President,” he eventually says, pulling himself up in one motion off the sofa, and turning toward the exit, even though he doesn't look forward to the cold walk back to his tent. But before he can reach the door, the President's voice calls out across the room.

“Stay,” he says, with a subtle undertone that is an unmistakable plea. He adds, as if a momentary afterthought: “Felix.”

Felix freezes at the doorknob. Please don't, Gaius. Slowly he turns around and tries to keep his tone carefully neutral.

“What is it, Mister President?”

Gaius purses his lips and stares at him for a long, confusing moment. “Felix,” he repeats, his voice adopting an academic quality Felix hasn't heard in what seems like a very long time. “Do you think that the Kobol Paradox can ever be solved?”

“Excuse me?” Felix asks, eyebrows raised.

Gaius repeats the question, and Felix can see now how his erudite tone is mostly manufactured and is hitching slightly with desperation. He stares in disbelief, then picks up the bait, not really sure why he does. It's been so long, it's a challenge to even get back into that kind of academic mindset.

“Not without a lot more research into photon travel and astrophysics,” he replies. “No one can possibly understand it until we figure out why gravity plays an obvious role.”

Gaius nods sagely, as if Felix has said something intriguing, when actually, he's really just parroting ideas half-forgotten from his college textbooks.

“True, true,” he agrees. “You know, I've always had a theory about Kobol's Paradox, but I could never work out how to prove it conclusively. He smiles wanly. “Astrophysical math was never my strong suit. You're much better at it than I am.”

Felix's eyes widen with surprise at the compliment. Gaius has never admitted to anything like that before.

“Thank you, Doctor Baltar,” he says automatically, taken back to an earlier, relatively more innocent time. Gaius genuinely smiles back at him, because they both know what just happened for a moment.

It's enough of an opening to keep them talking about science and then generally, life before all this, although they never once mention the attacks. They both seem to know that it will ruin something fragile they have constructed together.

“Well,” Felix says, after about an hour has passed. “We should probably both get some sleep. Busy day tomorrow.”

Gaius nods in assent, as if again, Felix has said something very wise. “Yes, busy day,” he echoes, watching Felix zipping up his jacket. “Are you sure you want to go out there?” he asks tentatively. He peers out the porthole across from his desk. “It must be beastly cold out there.”

Felix pauses in surprise. They both know what he means.

“I think it's for the best,” he finally replies.

“Of course, of course,” Gaius clears his throat and scatters through some documents on his desk. “By the way, where is that thing you wanted me to sign yesterday?”

“The executive order?” he asks, amazed. “The one allowing people back into the Fleet?”

A dismissive hand waves at him. “No, no, I'm not signing that.” He tosses papers aside in his search. “The one from yesterday … the one with the … Ah!”

He extracts a single-page document from the messy piles on his desk, grabs a pen and signs it, then dangles it towards Felix.

Eyes narrowed with confusion, Felix takes it and recognizes a document he indeed wanted Gaius to sign yesterday – an order to send Galactica's raptors on a search for more food resources on the planet. They need it desperately, especially if they're not going anywhere anytime soon. Gaius has been dragging his feet on signing it, insofar as Felix could tell, out of stubborn pride; he doesn't want Adama to know they are running out of food.

“Thank you, Gaius,” he says, though he knows gratitude is not what he should feel. The President of the Colonies nods acknowledgement, then does his best to avoid looking at Felix anymore. Felix takes the cue to leave, dropping off the document at his desk before he exits. He'll contact Galactica first thing in the morning.

The Vice-President is right. In the long run, they have to go back, even if Galactica does help them find food so they can hold out a little while longer. Felix once believed in the dream of New Caprica, but now he sees how it was just a dream. Gaius stubbornly refuses to see that. What if he never sees it?

In his mind's eye, he gets a flash image of Zarek leaning against the bulkhead. How long do the two of them wait for Gaius to come to his senses?

And when they are through with waiting, what then?

**
5. And One Time He Didn't

“Mister President, we've got quite a full agenda this morning.”

Gaius Baltar, dressed impeccably in a black suit jacket, straightens his tie and greets his chief of staff with an efficient but friendly smile. “Good morning, Mister Gaeta,” he says, reminding Gaeta to go through the pleasantries before just getting down to business. “You're up early.”

Gaeta doesn't bother to state the obvious – that the President is up even earlier. He's always up earlier than everyone, claiming that first daylight is the perfect time to get the most odious tasks out of the way.

“Don't forget that you have the People's Council meeting today at 1400 hours. They're expecting an update on the state of the apartment complex,” Gaeta begins, and President Baltar adds with a nod: “We've got the builder's union at 1100 as well, no? I hope you got around to those food estimates, by the way. I'll need them for the negotiations. We can't give awayallthe rations to the union, now can we?”

“No, sir.” Gaeta suppresses a small smile, having just noticed that the President has a pencil stuck behind his ear. Felix finds it endearing. Really, he can't believe how much he is still seriously attracted to the man. He had thought seeing Gaius Baltar every single day talking about mundane politics would finally cure him of this one-sided crush, but it hasn't. Still, Felix knows the smart thing is to keep things in check, and never let on. The sexual tension it would introduce into their work relationship would be such a bad idea.

“Anything else?” Baltar asks, impatient to return to his report.

“Well, there is a small supply issue.” Gaeta checks off another item on his clipboard. “It's not a problem yet, but it will be soon.”

“Well, let's hear it. You know my policy: Bad news first.”

“Well, sir, I know you don't like to have to bother Admiral Adama when we can manage well enough on our own, but I think you're going to want to see this.” He turns the clipboard upside down and hands it over to the President.

“Well, if we've got to ask him, we've got to ask him,” Baltar says, after looking over Felix's briefing. “We can't put my pride ahead of the people's safety.”

“Of course not, Mister President.”

“If only he were ever actually like that,” Felix mutters to himself, hand poised over the executive order he has typed up himself in secret. He has been sitting at his desk for the last hour and half, wrestling with a weighty decision. The squeals of garish laughter and throaty moans wafting from the Presidential bedroom are a soundtrack to his dilemma.

He hears a glass fall and smash in the bedroom, followed by a moment of silence, then, more racuous laughter; it gives Felix the resolve he needs. A moment later, the document is signed, in perfect mimcry of Gaius' overblown signature, which Felix knows so well by now, he could have been forging official documents for months.

But no matter how much he has been tempted by the idea, even as Gaius has taken them all further and further downhill these past thirteen months, Felix never has done it. Not until today.

But Tom is right. The survival of humanity is perhaps worth a few compromised morals and a few sleeping pills dissolved in Gaius' liquor bottle. If their plan works accordingly, Gaius will still be passed out cold atop a couple of interns when the Adama's raptors arrive to start ferrying volunteers back to the Fleet.

And once the ball gets rolling, Felix thinks, not even a Cylon basestar could turn them back.

Fic: New Beginnings and Brighter Tomorrows (Adama, Baltar - G)

millarific — Sat, 05 May 2012 16:17:51 GMT

Title: New Beginnings and Brighter Tomorrows
Author: millari
Characters: Adama, Baltar
Pairings: None
Rating: G
Wordcount: 670
Warnings: none
Summary: He's a squirrel of a man up close and personal, but Bill has to admit that in the public eye, Gaius Baltar has a certain inexplicable, greasy charisma.
A/N: Written for the Canon Expansion challenge at bsg_epics. This is based on the scene in which Baltar is seen giving a speech at the apartment building groundbreaking ceremony in the New Caprica flashbacks to "Unfinished Business".

He's a squirrel of a man up close and personal, but Bill has to admit that in the public eye, Gaius Baltar has a certain inexplicable, greasy charisma.

Bill sits as far away as he can from him on the dais, closer to Gaeta, who while not his favorite either these days, at least has always meant well and reassures him that someone with a healthy sense of responsibility is overseeing things on this planet

As Baltar takes the podium and starts what is more or less a pat speech about how this new apartment complex they're about to build will give them the shelter they need and comfort them during the upcoming winter, the President manages to infuse his words with an unexpected loftiness that speaks of soil under their feet, and new beginnings and a brighter tomorrow. He sounds like he even believes it maybe.

Or maybe Gaeta wrote the speech for him. But no matter who did, it's Baltar who's managing to sway over the crowd, their faces lit up with muted hope, despite the fact that Bill personally has had conversations with many of them, listening to complaints and protestations about how "Gaius Frakking Baltar" has left them high and dry in frakking tents and with dwindling resources. Somehow, they fall under the spell of his words now, if only for these few minutes, and Bill can finally see how this man won the election - with superficial images, one-liner sound bytes, and little substance underneath that nevertheless make a compelling argument for ...something, something worth taking a gamble on.

Yet, in private, Bill reflects, the man has a surprising dearth of self-confidence, for someone with the upbringing his accent implies. Oh he has egotism, enough for two men, no doubt; but it's paired with a surprising hair-trigger defensiveness for someone who grew up in the Caprican upper class. Baltar carries himself in the same way Bill remembers those young men and women he knew at the Academy did, and certainly, he shares their paltry work ethic. But Baltar never seems to have truly absorbed that upper-class Caprican sense of privilege his Academy-mates had by right of birth: The man flies off the handle at the slightest questioning of his abilities or anyone questioning his right to be somewhere. It's strange.

Hands are clapping now. There is even cheering. Gaeta springs up from beside him, formally shaking Baltar's hand, and Bill realizes it's time for him to rise and show the people that he supports the line of succession. Baltar has never said that this is what Bill's appearance is about, but his persistence on the point of Bill's attendance (through several calls from Gaeta, of course) had sent a message loud and clear.

"Congratulations, Mister President," he says as he shakes Baltar's hand, unwilling to give the man more than that. He needs to go find Laura, who should have been president, who understood what it means to have the responsibility of humanity's survival on your shoulders. Looking into Baltar's self-satisfied expression as he replies, "so glad you could attend, Admiral," with just a dash of irony, Bill finally gets what has rubbed him the wrong way about Gaius Baltar as president: The man has never been intimidated enough by the job. Certainly, there's a laziness to him that irks Bill, but really, it's how Gaius Baltar has never had that look in his eyes that Laura had when she first walked into his life, the one that said, Gods, can I even do this? I *have* to do this.

A moment later, they separate, and Gaeta's hands are gentle on Bill's back, firmly guiding him off the dais like a warhorse out to pasture, and Bill is too glad to be done to be annoyed, and secretly too glad to feel the breeze on his face and the mud under his feet.

Fic: Admit Nothing (Baltar, Four, Roslin, Billy, G)

millarific — Sat, 05 May 2012 15:55:34 GMT

Title: Admit Nothing
Author: millari
Characters: Baltar, Roslin, Billy, Four, implied Shelley Godfrey
Pairings: None
Wordcount: 2221
Rating: G
Warnings: none
A/N: This is inspired by my observations of the episode, “Six Degrees of Separation” that Baltar admits in front of Adama, Tigh and Gaeta that he believes that they should not be able to actually see Shelley Godfrey. Yet none of them ever remark on this, which struck me as strange.

“Well you know my opinion on the man,” Billy tells her with a shrug. “Brilliant, but a little ...”

“Yes, I know,” Laura smiles, then playfully twirls her finger a few times around her ear.

“Cuckoo,” Billy singsongs. “Maybe he's just suffering from stress. It wouldn't be surprising, right? Destruction of the Colonies and all...”

“But you have to admit that this is a very shocking accusation,” she counters. “I mean, if we have a collaborator in our midst, and he's Gaius Baltar ...”

“... we're all pretty frakked,” Billy finishes.

She sighs. It's just one crisis after another. “All right, that's it,” she says. “I'm getting to the bottom of this. Lieutenant Gaeta is still working on resolving the reflection in that picture, correct?”

“He doesn't think he'll be done until late tonight.”

“Well then we still have time,” she concludes. “I need to eliminate possibilities: I'm ordering a psych eval for Doctor Baltar.”

**

“So I would like to state for the record that this session is against my civil rights as a citizen of the twelve Colonies” Gaius declares the moment he sits down with possibly the last psychiatrist left in the universe.. “Not to mention, ludicrous.”

“Ludicrous?” The man across the room from him quirks an eyebrow. “According to multiple witnesses,” he glances down at a slim report in a manila folder, “you were seen talking very clearly to a woman by the name of … Shelley Godfrey. Then ten seconds later, you expressed genuine surprise that anyone else could see her. Then shortly after that, you claimed to have never met the woman in your life. Surely you can understand why people might be concerned.”

Gaius processes all this. They all saw, didn't they? He had been caught utterly flat-footed by this Shelley Godfrey person, ghost, Cylon, whatever she was, and now he looked mad, a fool or worse.

“I was being sarcastic!” Gaius tries lamely, putting extra emphasis on the last word to indicate how idiotic this all is. “I was expressing how ridiculous that anyone was paying attention to this woman, who has suddenly appeared out of nowhere to make baseless accusations ...” It's a weak argument at best, he knows.

“Baseless?” Doctor Simon's lips twist. “The woman has a photo of you entering the Ministry of Defense on the day of the Cylon attacks.”

“It isn't me!” Gaius pleads. “It's a fake! I don't know how they did it, but there are ways of faking photos! It would be in the interest of the Cylons to discredit me if they know that I invented a Cylon detector!”

“There's a Cylon detector?” The doctor's eyebrows rise. “Interesting.”

Gaius blanches. He's not supposed to talk about that to people without clearance. This is probably not helping build his case as a person who would never pass on state secrets, he belatedly realizes, feeling like his own worst enemy.

“Very well,” he reluctantly gives in to the inevitable. “I suppose we should just get this over with.”

Doctor Simon smiles. “I'll try to make it as painless as possible,” he assures him. “Now why don't we start with the simple stuff? Why don't you tell me about your family.”

“My family?” Gaius blinks incredulously. “My family is all dead.”

The doctor's eyes narrow slightly. “Oh, yes, well, of course they would be, wouldn't they?” For a moment, he actually looks at a loss. “Hm. Well, just because they're dead doesn't mean that you couldn't still tell me about them, right? Knowing about your family would be extremely helpful in putting together this psychological profile.”

Gaius stiffens. Something not right about this doctor pulls at the threads in the back of his mind, but he has no choice. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

The doctor needlessly shuffles some papers on his desk, pulls out a pen. “Oh, we can start with the basics. What did they do for a living, for example?”

That, at least is easy. Gaius falls back on familiar stratagems. “My father was an agricultural engineer, for one of the big conglomerates.”

“And your mother?”

“A chemist. She worked for the same company as my father. That's how they met.”

The doctor nods and scratches things down on his legal pad.

“And siblings?”

“I'm an only child,” he murmurs, this a familiar lie as well.

“I see,” Doctor Simon says thoughtfully. “Now, Doctor Baltar, I have a related question.”

“Yes?”

“Why are you lying to me?”

His mouth falls open. “Lying?” he manages after a moment. “I'm not lying. And anyway,” he adds suspiciously, “how could you possibly know if I were?”

“Ah,” the man tsks, and his features spike with gentle humor. “Let me keep some of my professional secrets, if you please.”

Gaius' jaw clamps shut.

“It's all right. I'm sure you have a very good reason for lying to me about your family, but I can assure you that I won't reveal the details in this evaluation to the President, just my final assessment.”

“And why should I contribute anything to the assessment, I find Gaius Baltar to be a perfectly sane Cylon collaborator? he challenges.

“Because I might write instead, Gaius Baltar is most credibly human, though affected (yet not impaired) by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” the doctor retorts. He gazes at Gaius, then cocks his head. “I think you can imagine how someone who lies about their family in this particular circumstance might come across as suspicious, Doctor, can't you?”

Gaius goes pale. Of course. A Cylon would lie about that.

“Now why don't we start over?” Doctor Simon suggests. “This time, with the truth.”

The truth. Gaius closes his eyes, and finds images of nuclear bombs going off over Aerelon waiting for him. His father in the nursing home on Caprica, so close to one of the blast epicenters, a detail he'd noticed while watching the news broadcasts on the day of the attacks, before the wireless had gone down permanently.

“Surely they can't be that awful to remember,” Doctor Simon gently prods, presumably noticing the look of horror that has crossed Gaius' face.

He swallowed. “No, no,” he concedes. “It's just that … we didn't exactly get along well.”

“I see.” Gaius can hear the doctor's voice probing “And why do you think that is?” .

Gaius exhales, realizing that it's slightly easier to contemplate them alive and difficult than it is to contemplate the alternative. “They never understood who I was. They only saw what they wanted me to be ...”

“What did they want you to be?”

He hesitates, debating how to respond then shrugs. “Oh, what the frak does it matter now, I suppose?” he says aloud to himself.

“They wanted me to be a farmer, like them. I was ashamed of that life. And they ...” he bites on his lip in a rueful gesture. “... they were ashamed of me. For not wanting it.”

“But you became a worlds-famous scientist and millionaire,” the doctor insists. “Surely they must have been proud of that.”

Gaius shakes his head, remembering all the rows with his father in the modest home Gaius had bought for him on Caprica. His father had hated it, had hated the life he saw Gaius leading on Caprica, and he had never ceased to let Gaius know that. You think you're such a big man, don't you, putting all on these airs, his father would rant on those times when they really got into it. I should have taken my belt to you more often, he'd mutter. Your Ma stopped me. She was always such a pushover for you, she was.

“And so you did have siblings then?” Doctor Simon's voice – Gaius can hear how carefully constructed the empathy there is – interrupts his reverie. He rubs at his eyes unhappily.

“Yes, eight of them,” he admits. What the frak, these admissions can't really make him look bad, can they? Not now, anyway. “We were four boys and five girls. My mother died giving birth to my youngest sister,” he growls, not able to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “The nearest hospital was ninety klicks away.”

The doctor pauses. “That must have been difficult. How old were you?”

“Eleven. I had just begun to master my Caprican accent.”

Doctor Simon turns thoughtful a second. “Her idea?” he inquires.

Gaius nods morosely. “She said I was smart. She said I should go to Caprica when I turned eighteen, go to university there, get a better life.”

He notices the doctor watching him intently. “What?” he says defensively, feeling like a specimen under one of his microscopes.

“Do you ever feel guilty about them?” The doctor's voice conveys earnest, warm concern for Gaius' well-being, but the reference to guilt only serves as a reminder of why he is here.

“What?” he chokes out, shaken. “Guilty? What would I have to feel guilty about?”

“I don't know,” the doctor replies thoughtfully. “For surviving?”

Two words. Those two words take him by surprise, and almost break him. But Gaius clamps down as hard as he possibly can, and he manages not to disintegrate into tears. Because he can't. If he does, they'll know. And besides, if he starts, he might never stop.

“I have nothing to feel guilty about,” he lies in a hoarse voice, and miraculously, the doctor seems to believe him. He begins scribbling some things down on the paperwork on a clipboard on his lap, and Gaius realizes that he hasn't been taking any notes for a long time now.

“Do you think I'm sane, Doctor?” he asks abruptly, suddenly thinking of his life now, and the woman in his head. It's a ridiculous notion that this man could give him answers about that, but the idea has quite suddenly consumed him, and he clings to it childishly.

The doctor chuckles under his breath. “Sane enough,” he replies. “Don't worry. I'll be sending you back to Roslin fit for duty.”

For a doctor whose job it is to comfort and aid one's mental health, the man has got an odd beside manner, Gaius reflects. But he supposes one can't be picky these days.

The man is now reaching across the chairs to take Gaius' hand and shake it. Gaius shakes it back automatically. This is really it? The man has seen him for fifteen minutes, asked him a bunch of random questions about his family that has really only succeeded in putting Gaius severely out of sorts, and now he's ready to declare him sane?

“Where was your practice, by the way?” he asks, not exactly sure why. The answer would make absolutely no difference to anything.

“Picon,” the man replies easily. “Good luck with that picture, incidentally. I for one am convinced that you're telling the truth – that it's a fake, I mean.”

Gaius' eyes widen. “Well, I do wish you'd tell the Commander and President Roslin that.”

“Well, to be honest, it's sort of against my orders,” he confides with another smile. “But I'll see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” Gaius breathes. “You can't imagine what a relief it is to have somebody believe me that I'm not a Cylon infiltrator.”

That elicits another soft chuckle. “I wouldn't say that, Doctor. It's actually not all that hard for me to put myself in your place.” He caps his pen, and glances towards the door. “Anyway, you're free to go. And again, good luck.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Gaius replies, already distracted by strategizing his next move. He's passed this hurdle. Now he needs to focus on discrediting the photo itself. For that, he needs to buttonhole his new lab assistant, Mister Gaeta.

You can do this, he tells himself. He's just got to hold it together a bit longer and get himself out of this mess. Then things will be better. He's rid himself of the woman in his head, it would seem. There's been no hide nor hair of her for two days. And the photo is a fake. The truth has to come out, doesn't it? The truth will set you free, he idly remembers the words from a provincial religious plaque that used to hang in his family's home near their altar to Hera. He'd hated it.

The important thing was to keep positive, to look like a man who was innocent. Gaeta will reveal the photo to be a fake, and the psych eval will only reinforce that Gaius is still useful to the Colonials. Then, once his loyalty has been questioned and redeemed like this, their trust in him will be all the more solid, won't it?

The important thing is to hold it together, he repeats like a mantra. Admit nothing.

Fic: One More Time

millarific — Sat, 05 May 2012 15:39:29 GMT

Title: One More Time
Author: millari
Characters Baltar, Gaeta
Pairings: Baltar/Gaeta
Wordcount: 659
Warnings: None
Summary: No one here wanted him, was even willing to talk to him. No one except, maybe Felix.
A/N: Written for the Canon Expansion challenge at bsg_epics

Gaius watched him from across the hangar deck, his former chief of staff, smoking a cheap cigarette with a focused fury that intimidated Gaius. It was strange. He had never been afraid of Felix, not even when the man had held a gun to his head as New Caprica had crumbled to dust around them. But here, in this cavernous room, the silence deafening between them, Gaius found his words frozen, his courage gone.

He had to talk to him. The Colonials needed to know about that potential supernova. At the very worst, it might endanger the people Galactica had on the planet. But the best case scenario was that it was a signpost to Earth, and Laura would want to know that. Cavil and D'Anna were standing at the far end of the deck, casting bored glances at the ceiling, probably thinking they were showing the Colonials just how little they cared about Baltar, how easily they would give him up for a deal. But as soon as he had walked forward and met Laura's gaze, Gaius had realized how little the Cylons – how little he – had understood: they weren't even slightly interested in taking him back. Adama was out there in the other room bluffing about even considering the deal. No one here wanted him, was even willing to talk to him.

No one except, maybe Felix.

Felix didn't want to be here; that much was obvious from his stance - all curled into himself over a cigarette that refused to ash, as stubbornly as Felix refused to meet his gaze. And so his presence here nonetheless, which was not really necessary, and the crisp, fastidious uniform he was wearing, spoke volumes: Adama trusted him, even though he had worked so closely with Gaius for so long. Adama would listen to Felix when he told him about the supernova. And when he and Laura asked him how he'd figured it out, upright, earnest Felix would tell them how Gaius had risked everything to pass on the intelligence, when he didn't have to, when the Cylons were right in the room breathing down his neck. And then they'd see Gaius' value and reward him with a chance to come home.

The long, precarious ash on Felix's cigarette finally broke, and he stood there with the remaining stub, still refusing to look at Gaius. It wasn't much of an opening, but when the cigarette was gone, Gaius knew he would no longer have an opening if Felix walked away. He made himself get up from the bench and walk over, ignoring the sudden aggressive attention of the Marines, who in a cascade of clicking gun barrels, all trained their weapons on him, an overkill reaction that reminded Gaius of the way they dealt with Cylons. Was that what he had become to them?

The sound of the guns drew Felix's gaze up – finally – and Gaius saw how his eyes were startled wide to look at him, before consciously falling back into a disgusted scowl. But Gaius had seen the truth there, if only for a fleeting moment. Felix had always had trouble saying no to Gaius.

I believed in you. Those words of Felix's back on New Caprica, when he had held a gun in his face, echoed in Gaius' head as he stared at him now. He was a different Felix than he'd remembered - now with dark circles under his eyes and the beginning of worry lines around his mouth. I believed in the dream of New Caprica ...

Gaius swallowed back his anxiety. Believe in me now, he thought. Please, Felix. Just one last time.

Plans Within Plans (Baltar, Sweet!Eight - PG)

millarific — Sat, 05 May 2012 15:16:22 GMT

Title: Plans Within Plans
Author: millari
Characters : Baltar, Sweet Eight, implied Sweet Eight/Gaeta
Pairings: Implied Gaeta/Sweet!Eight
Wordcount: 3059
Warnings: none
Beta: geekbynight

Gaius waits until they are completely alone in Colonial One, a feat that isn't easy to do, especially because it takes him several days to pin down the slight differences between her and the other Eights on New Caprica.

But thankfully, one of the ways he learns to tell her apart is in the way that the other Cylons treat her – like a kid sister who's been given some minor task to do, to occupy her and make her feel more important than she actually is. She was downloaded less than a month ago, he gets Caprica to tell him, not understanding why he cares about this particular Eight he's never really met. She's naïve, inexperienced, she tells him. The others don't listen to her much yet.

He would never have dared this confrontation otherwise.

“I know what you're doing,” he says to Felix's Eight.

She looks up quickly from the paperwork she is filling out on Felix's desk, leans the chair back on two legs to better get a look at Gaius and says with a casualness that Gaius knows is at least partly affected.

“What do you think you know?” she says, her tone currently postulating that Gaius has lost his mind. But Gaius knows what losing one's mind feels like, lord knows, and this is not it. This is opening your eyes and ears and really listening to what people are saying around you, and putting together the truth.

“With Felix,” he clarifies. “I know all about your ruse that he thinks he's keeping such a secret. It's cruel. Monstrous.”

Her face takes on a disappointed frown. “Please.” She settles back into her paperwork, as if Gaius isn't worth any more of her time. “He's in love and he thinks he's saving people. It's a pretty good deal for him, I'd say, as long as he doesn't find out. I think he's happier than he's been in a long time.”

“If you think that he is happy, then you are truly one deluded machine,” he says and rises up out of his chair to pour himself a drink at the credenza. “You don't know him at all, do you? He walks around every day terrified for his life that he'll say or do the wrong thing and end up next door to the people that you've got him believing that he's saving.”

The barb pulls her back out of her report. “And why do you think you know him so well?” she taunts. “Because you used to frak him?”

Gaius pales at that before he can stop himself. Did Felix tell her that? How does she even know?

“That was a mistake!” he exclaims, not sure why he feels the need to defend what he had or didn't have with Felix. “It was over very quickly!”

She raises her eyebrows. “I don't think Felix thought it was a mistake,” she retorts. “I think he wishes you'd stayed with him, actually. He talks about you with such bitterness, with the tone of someone who got their heart broken.” Her gaze sharpens with sudden, surprised interest. “Wait, are you jealous of me? Is that what this posturing is about?” She laughs at the very idea.

The conversation is rapidly getting away from him. “I am not posturing!” he exclaims. “And this is not about jealousy! And anyway, neither is the point! The point is I know Felix very well, and I can tell that this is not making him happy, it's only making him feel like he can look himself in the mirror again. And when he finds out how much of a lie it is, he'll absolutely lose his mind over it.”

The Eight cocks her head at him, as if he's surprised her. “Well then, you can see why it's in your interest, if you care about him at all, to make sure he doesn't find out, right?”

Stop perverting my words, he rails inwardly. “No! I won't continue to let him be deluded into thinking that he's saving people when in fact he's selecting them for execution!” He slams down his glass, resolved to take Felix aside, break the news to him as gently as he can. He'll just have to make sure that Felix doesn't try anything noble and stupid once he tells him. He just needs to stop complying with the Eight, for his own sanity. That's the main thing.

But then the Eight's murmurs throws everything he thinks he knows into confusion. “And what makes you think he'll believe you?”

Gaius goes cold. “He'll believe me,” he whispers hoarsely. “Why would I tell him such a horrific lie? He'll know I wouldn't.”

Instead of answering, she rises from Felix's desk. “For a scientist, you're not very observant, are you?”
She stops right next to Gaius' temple, her words tickling against his ear. It would be seductive if she weren't so disturbing and strange. How she manages to convince Felix that they are in love is beyond Gaius' abilities to comprehend.

He startles and gasps as she grabs a swatch of his tangled hair and uses it to yank him towards her. He yelps at the frightening change of tone. “You were a selfish lover with him, I'll bet,” she chuckles harshly. “I'll bet you always insisted that he take care of you first.”

“What?” Gaius chokes, the pain in his scalp forcing him to stay far closer to her than he would like.

“You used him, didn't you? And he didn't even really get how much you'd used him, even afterwards. He still doesn't understand why he couldn't hold your interest.”

Gaius felt tears spring to his eyes with the pain. “Let me go, you harridan,” he growls, less afraid of her now that he's had a moment to think. “What does this have to do with anything?” he growls.

“Oh, but it has everything to do with everything,” she purrs. “That's what you don't understand about Gaeta at all.” She thrusts his head back as she releases her grip. “Gaeta sees what he wants to see. That's why he couldn't see how you were treating him. That's why he can't see through my game.”

With an air of bemusement, she perches herself on his desk, her legs dangling just above the floor. “Go ahead and tell him if you want. He won't believe it anyway. He won't let himself know what's going on right in front of his eyes. Do you know why?”

“I expect you're going to tell me,” he grumbles, rubbing away the residual tingling in his scalp.

“Because Gaeta isn't in love with me, just like he was never in love with you. He's in love with hope. And she's a far more satisfying lover than you or I could ever be for him. Do you understand? He will fight for her, disregard anything we say for her.” She pauses thoughtfully. “He might even kill for her. That would be an interesting experiment, to see if he would.”

Gaius stares at her agog. “If you try anything like that,” he hisses at her, “I swear ...” .

But she just rolls her eyes at him. “Hmph. Like you could hurt me.” she shuffs. “Oh don't worry. I'd never do that. I do actually like him, you know. I wouldn't have gone to all this trouble if I didn't. I would have just put him in detention and tortured it the information out of him.”

“That would at least be honest,” he says in a defeated monotone. The implied threat of what she might do if Gaius interferes and Felix stops cooperating with her game hangs between them. Gaius can't be responsible for that.

He picks up his drink again, stares into it mournfully.

“No. It would be cruel to do that,” she declares, and when she sees that he won't engage her anymore, goes back to her work at Felix's desk. “I'd do it that way if I had to,” she repeats. “But it would be cruel.”

Several minutes go by with Gaius staring at his glass. When he breaks the room's silence, he tries to keep his tone neutral.

“You know, he'll have less suspicions if you let some of them live.”

“Mm?” She sounds genuinely surprised, and it bolsters him.

“Don't you think even Felix will start to wonder if he never gets to see any of the people he released? Let some of them free every now and then, so he can see the proof of his efforts walking around the city.” He gears up to the task with which he has beset himself. “He'll question it all less. He'll be more pliant.”

“He's not questioning anything,” she says easily. “I'm not worried.” But she picks up her and work and rises to leave. “Still,” she says, just before exiting, “it's an interesting idea.”

Felix is not stupid, Gaius thinks to himself, alone again in Colonial One. He's a tactical officer. He will ask questions once he gets over the euphoria of finally being able to save lives. And then he will unravel all of this Eight's lies when he starts asking the right ones. This will happen with Gaius telling him or not. And he doesn't deserve any of the answers he'll get, God knows. If there was ever an unblemished innocent in all this mess, it was Felix Gaeta.

Gaius might not be able to save him from this horror. He will have gotten people killed, directly, metaphorically by his own hand. And it will break him, Gaius thinks.

But with any luck, Gaius has just planted a seed that the Eight will grow, despite herself. Just maybe, her little soicopathic experiment will have genuine good deeds attached to it that Felix can cling to as consolation, when everything in his mind will necessarily go pear-shaped.

Fic Master List

millarific — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 23:03:04 GMT

THE HUNGER GAMES

Planting Seeds in Vanquished Soil
Haymitch Abernathy, Mags, Beetee, Chaff, President Snow, Haymitch's Dad, Haymitch's Girl, OCs, NC-17
Pairing: Beetee/Haymitch
Summary: On his victory tour, Haymitch soon finds out that the real Games have only just begun, and survival means learning to spin out a web of lies, compromises and self-destruction. The Games' oldest living victor and arguably its most intelligent one show him that even in the tainted life of a Victor, there are still ways to prevail.
Warnings: Implied references to forced prostitution, canonical character deaths
Author's Note: This is multi-chaptered. You will get a link at the bottom of each chapter to go on to the next chapter. There are also links at the top of each chapter to the previous chapters.

Sit With Me, Muchacho
Haymitch, Mags, G
Summary: "Do you tell them to target my tributes? Is that it? The weak, underfed ones? The easy targets from District Twelve?"
Warnings: None
Author's Note: This started out as a reward ficlet for trovia, for working on her dissertation. She also supplied the beta and title. Thanks!

Lies Are Fair in Love and War
Kat/Peeta, Haymitch/OMC, R
Summary: Peeta and Haymitch have a plan to save Kat. The appearance of an unexpected visitor from Haymitch's past suddenly makes that plan possible, but his help might come at a cost.
Warnings: References to forced prostitution and nonconsensual sex acts, all in the past and off screen.
Author's Note: Slight AU, in that it treats as untrue a statement Haymitch makes in Mockingjay and takes that as a jumping off point for the fic; otherwise very canon compliant with the first book.
Author's Note 2: Prompted as reward fic by the lovely trovia!

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

Reinventing Gaius Baltar
Gaius Baltar, Sharon Valerii, Karl 'Helo' Agathon
Summary: Fate has never given Gaius anything, other than a brilliant mind.
Author's Note: This was written from a prompt given at the incredibly supportive BSG fandom community bsg_epics. The prompt was to write about the moment in the Miniseries when Gaius considers betraying an old woman's trust and stealing her place on the last Raptor off Caprica.

Our House
Gaeta/Hoshi, PG
Summary: Gaeta and Hoshi get much more than they bargained for when they adopt a child on New Earth.
Author's Note: This is a remix of kappamaki33's ficlet Mr. Gaeta Builds His Dream House done for the 2010 bsg_remix challenge.

Experimentation
Baltar/Gaeta, PG
Summary: "No, Gaius," he raises his eyebrows and says with a little too emphasis, but it should get the job done. "She's not really my type, if you know what I mean."
Author's Note: Done for the bsg_epics Shipper War Challenge. Inspired by a prompt from the awesome geekbynight.

Lay Down Your Burdens
Baltar/Gaeta, PG
Summary: I could help you out of that, he imagined himself saying, a seductive growl in his voice.
Author's Note: Done for the bsg_epics Shipper War Challenge. Inspired by a prompt from the awesome geekbynight.

You Made a Slow Disaster of Me
Baltar/Gaeta, PG
Summary: They both know what Felix is giving up of himself here and now to send Gaius to the airlock.
Author's Note: Done for the bsg_epics Shipper War Challenge. Inspired by a prompt from geekbynight.

It Doesn't Feel Like Cheating
Baltar, Gaeta, PG-13
Summary:The one-sided, step-by-step dissolution of a relationship.
Author's Note: Done for the bsg_epics Shipper War Challenge. Inspired by a prompt from the lovely geekbynight.

Sketches From the Journal of a Dead Man
Baltar, Gaeta, G
Summary: On New Caprica, Gaeta plays a private but deadly game.
Author's Note: Done for the bsg_epics Shipper War Challenge. Inspired by a prompt from the lovely geekbynight.

Exit Music For a Planet (The Sign Here Remix)
Baltar/Gaeta, Zarek, NC-17: rimming, light BDSM
Summary: Four times Felix Gaeta got President Baltar to sign something on New Caprica (and one time he didn't).
Author's Note: Done for the 2012 bsg_remix. Title/Author of Original Story: Seeds I Plant Will Grow by hobbit_kate Thanks to her for participating in this remix and giving me an excuse to explore more of her fic!

New Beginnings and Brighter Tomorrows
Adama, Baltar, G: no warnings
Summary: He's a squirrel of a man up close and personal, but Bill has to admit that in the public eye, Gaius Baltar has a certain inexplicable, greasy charisma.
Author's Note: Written for the Canon Expansion challenge at bsg_epics. This takes place during the speech we see Baltar giving in "Unfinished Business" at the apartments groundbreaking ceremony in the flashbacks to New Caprica.

Admit Nothing
Baltar, Four, G: no warnings
Summary: “Well you know my opinion on the man,” Billy tells her with a shrug. “Brilliant, but a little ...”
Author's Note: Written for the Canon Expansion challenge at bsg_epics. This is inspired by my observation in the episode, “Six Degrees of Separation” that Baltar admits in front of Adama, Tigh and Gaeta that he believes that they should not be able to actually see Shelley Godfrey. Yet none of them ever remark on this, which struck me as strange.

One More Time
Gaeta/Baltar, G: no warnings
Summary: No one here wanted him, was even willing to talk to him. No one except, maybe Felix.
Author's Note: Written for the Canon Expansion challenge at bsg_epics

Plans Within Plans
Sweet!Eight, Baltar, implied Gaeta, PG: no warnings
Summary: Gaius confronts Sweet!Eight about what she's doing to Gaeta on New Caprica
Author's Note: Written for the Canon Expansion challenge at bsg_epics

Remission
Gaeta/Skulls, Gaeta/Baltar, NC-17: spanking
Summary: Gaius might have taken it less terribly if it hadn't already been a wretched, wretched day.
Author's Note: Written with geekbynight

Reprieve
Roslin, Maya, Baltar, Caprica Six (Roslin/Maya, Baltar/Caprica), NC-17: voyeurism
Summary: He was going to appear at her tent like a stray dog that had been kicked too many times, and Laura would give him nothing.

BSG/Torchwood: Good Faith (cowritten with trovia)
Owen, Jack, Gaeta, Dee, Cottle, Ishay, PG
Summary: ”Ships don't run on bloody Chinese takeout, you know.”

Going the Distance (Part 1 | Part 2)
Kara, Hot Dog, Lee, Crashdown, Boomer, Zak (Kara/Hot Dog), PG-13
Summary: “I know it's the end of the world, Costanza,” Starbuck bit out with sardonic amusement. “But seriously? You need a date this bad?”

Sackcloth and Ashes
Baltar, Gaeta, Dee (Baltar/Gaeta), NC-17: spanking, masochism, reference to childhood spanking
Summary: A simple bedroom game becomes more complex than Felix ever bargained for.

Odds Are You'll Find Your Way.
Eight(OC), Paulla, Baltar, various non-descript Cylons, various OCs, (Eight!OC/Baltar), PG-13: no warnings
Summary: For some reason, the moment Gaius Baltar touches her in the tall grass by the light of the bonfire, Eight remembers mushroom clouds on the Caprican horizon.
Author's Note: Written for BSG Remix 2011. Original story: The Odds Are There to Beat, by nicole_anell.

Chance Encounter
Felix Gaeta, Lee Adama, Bill Adama, Kara Thrace, various minor OCs (Lee/Gaeta), NC-17: Mild D/s, mentions of bondage, spanking, pegging
Summary: It's only human to crave a little clarity.

Twelve Hours
Felix Gaeta, Gaius Baltar (Gaeta/Baltar), PG-13
Summary: On the night after Colonial Day, Felix and Gaius got drunk at a card game and fell into bed together, in what should have been a simple enough proposition.

A Tough Choice (cowritten with trovia)
Felix Gaeta, Gaius Baltar, Head!Six, PG
Summary: In a world where Adama didn't survive the Fall and everything was different, Gaius Baltar is accused of a crime he didn't commit.

The One Where Felix Gaeta Went To New Caprica To Get A Notebook But Ended Up Creating A Monster (cowritten with trovia)
Felix Gaeta, Helo, Gaius Baltar, G
Summary: Gaeta’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “You told me that I had free reign to bring any of Dr. Baltar’s belongings back from New Caprica.”

Nobody
Felix Gaeta, Gaius Baltar, Tom Zarek, G
Summary: When the Cylons arrive on New Caprica, Felix learns just who he can count on.

Free Will and Other Notions of A Capricious God (The Destiny is Overrated Mix)
Head!Six, Head!Baltar, Gaeta, Baltar, Zarek (Baltar/Gaeta), NC-17: Bondage, dominance/submission themes
Summary: She has refused up until now to consider the possibility that one day she will have to explain why Gaius Baltar is sleeping with a man God barely notices, instead of with the handpicked Cylon who is supposed to help him save the humans and Cylons from mutual self-destruction.

The Gift
Hot Dog, Baltar (Hot Dog/Gaeta), G
Summary: Even if he just got one tooth, Brendan hoped it was one in the front...

Narcissus
Baltar, OFC, PG
Summary: Twelve-year-old Gaius Baltar and his twin sister Maya plan to leave Aerelon when they are eighteen.

What Happens On Cloud Nine...
Gaeta, Starbuck (Gaeta/Starbuck), NC-17
Summary: Starbuck has volunteered to do a supply run to the Cloud Nine luxury liner. Her reward? A free hotel room for the night and some casino chips. She invites Felix Gaeta to fill her Raptor's second seat on this trip.
Prequel: Untitled Ficlet
Gaeta, Starbuck (Gaeta/Starbuck), PG
Summary: “Come on, Felix, it’ll be fun. How often do you take time to have fun?”

Lord of Misrule
Baltar, Gaeta (Baltar/Gaeta), NC-17
Summary: Gaius smirked with sudden understanding. “Oh, I see. Trade clothes, trade lives, is it? Should I play you then?”

Aftermath (Part I | Part 2)
Hoshi, Gaeta, Caprica Six, Tigh, Adama, Seelix, implied Baltar (Hoshi/Gaeta), R
Summary: Louis Hoshi has lost the man he loved. More than that, he's lost his innocence.

Flu Christmas
Baltar, Gaeta (Baltar/Gaeta), NC-17, AU
Summary: When Felix thought about it, it made total sense that Gaius would embrace an Earth holiday like Christmas.

A Familiar Voice
Gaeta, Ishay, Baltar, OFC, G
Summary: The familiar, mellifluous voice rang in Felix’s ears day and night.

Lab Experiment
Gaeta/Baltar/Hot Dog, NC-17: Threesome sex, very brief mention of spanking play
Summary: Baltar's lab is used for some unorthodox explorations.

Preparing the Way
Gaeta, Baltar, G
Summary: Gaeta gets an unwanted visitor in sickbay.

Muscle Memory
Gaeta, Baltar (Gaeta/Baltar), R: Minor amounts of d/s, mentions of amputated limbs
Summary: An uneasy reunion for Gaius and Felix in a place where nothing is right.

BSG/Iron Man: Impulse Control
Felix Gaeta, Tony Stark (Felix/Tony), NC-17
Summary: Felix meets billionaire inventor Tony Stark for the first time, and um, porn happens.

Days of Wonder: Part I | Part II
Gaeta, Starbuck, Anders, Baltar, Leoben, Tyrol, Tory, Tigh, Nicky Tyrol, mentions of D'Anna, Cavil, Simon, Doral, OC (Tory/Leoben, Starbuck/Anders, Tigh/Caprica), PG-13
Summary: A crack!fic in which Baltar has formed a post-apocalyptic rock band called The Seven Wonders with the Dylan 4, Starbuck and Leoben and they tour the Northeast. With Felix Gaeta as their longsuffering manager.

Ephemera
Gaeta, Baltar, Athena, implied Helo (Gaeta/Baltar), PG
Summary: This is a totally AU, possibly self-induglent fic set in a mythical Season 4 where Baltar and Gaeta are not trying to kill and/or betray each other, and Gaius hasn't been stolen by the Den Mothers of the Apocalypse. It may have also been influenced by too much viewing of "Dancing With the Stars" at the gym. :)

She Has a Plan(ner): The Crack!Blackberry Fic
Tory Foster, implied Dylan Four, implied Cally Tyrol, implied Gaius Baltar, implied Laura Roslin, implied Playa Palacios (Tory/Baltar), PG-13
Summary: A look at recent goings-on in Tory Foster's daily planner. Yes, it's crack.

Crossed Frequencies
Baltar, Gaeta, implied Bill Adama, implied Paulla, G, crack
Summary: It all started with a simple cease and desist order...

Inspiration
Baltar, Head!Six, Lee (Baltar/Lee), PG-13
Summary: A crackily implausible but hopefully entertaining vignette that could have existed in "Escape Velocity after Gaius got beat up but before he made his "we're all so PERFECT!" speech. (If you squint a lot and don't think about things too much.)

Aperture
Caprica, Head!Six, implied Head!Baltar, implied Baltar, implied Roslin, implied Tory Foster (Caprica/Head!Six), NC-17: exhibitionism
Summary: Caprica Six receives a very unexpected visitor in the brig.

Transmutation
Head!Six, implied Baltar (Head!Six/Baltar), G
Summary: Head!Six muses on her relationship with Baltar.

Brilliant Mistake
Roslin/Baltar, NC-17
Summary: There was really no other way to describe the feeling – her head felt plain squishy.

Hostile Witness
Gaeta, Romo Lampkin, implied Baltar, PG
Summary: The never-seen, totally made-up, sketchily legal pre-trial interview of Felix Gaeta by Romo Lampkin.

From a Balance Beam (Part 1 | Part 2)
Boomer, Gaeta, Caprica Six, Baltar (Felix/Boomer), NC-17, WIP
Summary: Boomer catches Gaeta stealing documents for the Resistance. What will she do about it?

Life in Mono
Gaius, Boomer, Caprica, G
Summary: Baltar and Boomer are on the Cylon ship going to negotiate with the humans for the Eye of Jupiter. What would they talk about?

The Life Within (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3)
Gaius, Caprica, D'Anna, PG
Summary: Gaius, Caprica, polyamory, angst, hybrids! What more could you want?

BSG/Torchwood: Doppelganger
Captain Jack Harkness, Jack Delphi (OC) (Jack/OC), adult, AU
Summary: While at a swanky party on a civilian ship in the Fleet, Jack meets an intriguing stranger.

Soul Meets Body (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3)
Gaeta, D'Anna, Doral, Cavil, Boomer, Caprica, Baltar, PG
Summary: Felix is in deadly trouble with the Cylons.

Faithful (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4)
Gaeta, Baltar, Adama, Roslin, adult
Summary: Central plot is Gaeta's interrogation of Baltar, but much time is spent showing other things as well, including a meeting between Roslin, Adama, and Gaeta, and flashbacks to the time on New Caprica pre-Cylons.

OTHER FANDOMS

Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire: More Than One Way To Die
Sandor Clegane, references to Ayra Stark, Polliver and The Tickler, PG (only for lots of swearing)
Summary: What happened to The Hound after Ayra left him to die.

Good Faith (cowritten with trovia)
Owen, Jack, Gaeta, Dee, Cottle, Ishay, PG
Summary: ”Ships don't run on bloody Chinese takeout, you know.”

BSG/Torchwood: Good Faith (cowritten with trovia)
Owen, Jack, Gaeta, Dee, Cottle, Ishay, PG
Summary: ”Ships don't run on bloody Chinese takeout, you know.”

Chuck: Wordless
Casey, Chuck (Casey/Chuck), NC-17: Mild D/s play, light bondage
Summary: Chuck was more fond of words than anyone Casey had ever known, more fond of them than Casey was necessarily comfortable with.

BSG/Iron Man: Impulse Control
Felix Gaeta, Tony Stark (Felix/Tony), NC-17
Summary: Felix meets billionaire inventor Tony Stark for the first time, and um, porn happens.

X-Files: Birthday Girl
Scully, Mulder (Scully/Mulder), NC-17
Summary: Dana Scully learns the upside to a broken-down elevator.

Venture Brothers: Enjoy The Silence
Dr. Girlfriend, implied Monarch, Brock Sampson, Colonel Gentleman, Dr. Venture, Dean Venture (Dr. Girlfriend/Brock Sampson), NC-17
Summary: The problem was, she liked being Charlene.

BSG/Torchwood: Doppelganger
Captain Jack Harkness, Jack Delphi (OC) (Jack/OC), adult, AU
Summary: While at a swanky party on a civilian ship in the Fleet, Jack meets an intriguing stranger.