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It's the same as always, or at least it feels like he's been here before. He's at the ledge, and he can feel the heat, the flames licking from below. There's smoke, or maybe just sweat in his eyes, but he can hardly breathe from the strain.
He has a hand in his, and he's holding on for dear life, trying to keep her from falling. He knows, somehow, she's dead if he lets go, but his arms are shaking from the strain, and they're both sweaty from the heat, and he doesn't know how much more effort he can put in.
"Please! Help me!" she calls. The voice is familiar. Katniss? He wants to peer over the edge, to see who it is he is holding up, but he doesn't dare break their precarious position. There is a banging from somewhere in the collapsing house.
There is a knock at the door and Haymitch jolts awake. He is sweating, his heart thumping, and wisps of his dream float past his eyes before dissipating from memory. He can see the fire from the dream still, and instantly panics that it was real, that the only true assurance he has left - his home - is on fire, but there's no light, no smell of danger. As he calms down slightly, he can hear the patter of rain. Not a guarantee that there's no fire, exactly, but a reassurance nonetheless. It's November, just less than a year out from the end of the war, and it rains nearly every night, chilly and melancholy in District 12, a harbinger of winter to come.
It's still dark, likely one or two in the morning, and he can't imagine who would call on him so late. He slips on a pair of ratty slippers and a flannel shirt over the t-shirt and shorts he wears as pajamas and answers the door.
He doesn't recognize her at first, because she doesn't look like how she did before the war, or just after. But he knows her by that expression, accusatory and suspicious, as if he was the one showing up on her doorstep in the middle of the night. It's impressive, really, for someone so small to be so contemptuous all the time.
"Jo?" He sounds groggy from sleep, and he wonders, just for a moment, if this is a continuation of the dream.
"Can I come in?"
He realizes only then that she's shivering, rain-soaked in a fairly thin linen shirt and pants far too light for November in District 12. Her hair, which has grown to her chin in the year they've been apart, is sticking to her cheeks, and her District 13 combat boots are covered in mud.
"Yes, come in, I'll make some tea." It's all he can think to do. Something to do with his hands, something warm, and he opens the door wider to let her inside. He turns on a switch- he has electricity but only a few lights- and they are illuminated, at least in a half-light. She is hugging her arms around herself, dripping a bit on the doormat just inside his house, and taking a look around. "I have dry clothes, but they'll all be too big," he says.
"You don't have anything left over from a lover?" she asks.
He bites his lip, unsure if he wants to smile or take that as an insult. "No, no lovers," he confirms. He's learned his lesson, that bad things happen to anyone he dares take as a girlfriend or lover. He's retired from such things now. He puts on the kettle to boil and goes upstairs to his bedroom to bring her a t-shirt and flannel pants and an old sweater, thick enough to fend off the November chill. She's kicked off the boots, leaving them to dry on his doormat.
True to the memory of Johanna from before the war, she peels off the rain-soaked pants right in his front hall, the linen shirt following close behind with no thought to modesty. He can't help but look, as she stands in his house in nothing but her bra and panties. It's a morbid curiosity; it's desire.
She is thin, as he could tell from before she took off her clothes: weight she hasn't regained from the war. There are little burn marks on her chest, to match the ones he knows are at her hairline, a scar of a knife wound at her flank, but the rest is familiar, a body he knows.
She pulls the pants on, tying the waistband tight and rolling up the cuffs to make them fit as he pours the tea, and then she takes off the bra before putting the shirt on. Her breasts are small, half a handful, but it's this memory of having her in hand, of them holding on to each other that finally awakens something in him, and he feels a small stirring of arousal that makes him turn away to find the sugar and a tray. He only looks back once she's pulling the sweater over her head, and so he only glimpses it for a second: the irritated, discolored veins in the crook of her left arm, the track-marks from too much morphling use. It's just a flash and then it's hidden, but he knows what he saw.
He nods to the table and they sit. The clocks says it's two-thirty in the morning now, and he's exhausted, and he wonders how long she's been awake for, really. He opens a sleeve of crackers and offers them, as well. "I need to hide out in 12 for a while," she says, casually, while sipping the tea, as if she was asking to borrow a screwdriver.
"Jo, where were you?" It isn't like he's going to say no, but he needs more than this.
"District 2," she says, and offers no more.
He tries to think who he knows is living in District 2. Gale Hawthorne comes to mind first. There's a chance they could have become lovers, after the war. It's hard to picture Gale driving Johanna out of town - it's much easier to picture the opposite - but he hadn't imagined Gale designing the bombs that ended the war, so he supposes he needs to extend what he thinks is possible. "Why did you leave?"
He isn't trying to interrogate her, conscious as always of her time in the Capitol prison, but she is offering him so little.
Here, she pauses, halfway through swallowing, and she chokes a little. She puts the back of her hand to her mouth and takes a few breaths, and it's the first time he's seen her stumble all night. Truthfully, he knows Johanna is mostly bluster, that all of her anger is a front to protect herself, but it never prepares him for the whiplash of seeing it melt away and having her look genuinely frightened. She meets his gaze. "I can't go back to prison," she says. "I would rather die."
She was arrested, then. It all fits into place, somehow, without her having to say it. In fact, he wonders if she purposely let him see the evidence of her drug use so that she wouldn't have to say it. Morphling was still illegal to use, of course, without a doctor's supervision. None of the Districts, nor the Capitol bothered enforcing such a law except Districts 1 and 2. "Was it the morphling?" he asks, to confirm.
She nods, the motion causing her to wince in a way that is familiar to him now, from spending time with her in District 13, something about certain head movements causing spasms of pain. "Baria got me out on bail," she says, after it passes. "Then we decided I had to leave. I couldn't go to 7, they'd know to look for me there."
She had been staying with Enobaria. It seemed unthinkable for the two of them to be friends before the war, but so many things seemed unthinkable before the war. "I don't think they'd cross District borders for a simple drug charge," he says.
"Baria says they could. There's only 7 Victors left, so we're sort of famous. And the Peacekeepers don't have much else to do anymore."
Enobaria isn't stupid. Haymitch thinks she's one of the smarter people he knows, actually, and she knows District 2 well. He just doesn't want to accept that she's right, because why would they waste their time on something so stupid? "You can stay," he says, answering the question he should have answered a while ago.
She bites her lips, pushing the empty tea cup away. "Thank you." He can tell she's annoyed to be obligated to him, that there's still frustration on her part about what happened between them during the war. But her desire to avoid going to prison is stronger, and she'll accept his hospitality.
"I don't have a spare room," he says. "Or rather, I do, but my spare bed was given away as we were rebuilding." It's currently filled with stills making moonshine, but he can explain that another time.
"It's fine, I'll make do." She yawns, and he wonders if she's been awake since leaving District 2. He hadn't made the trip in some time, but District 2 to District 12 via the Capitol took about 40 hours.
"You can stay on the couch, but it's small, and very lumpy. I don't mind sharing the bed, it's not as if we've never done it before."
She gives him one more of her skeptical, hostile glances, then follows him upstairs. She spends a few minutes cleaning up in the bathroom, then joins him on the other side of the bed. They don't speak again, there's nothing more to say when they're this exhausted.
The next morning, Johanna is awake before Haymitch. He doesn't know how this is possible, since he suspects she hasn't slept much in days, but he hears his shower running as he wakes.
She comes downstairs a few minutes later, after he's made tea, and pours herself a cup from the kettle. His kitchen is small, but the essentials are there. "There's eggs and bread. I think some apples too. Maybe some milk if you're lucky."
He watches her find some oats from the cabinet and use the kettle to make oatmeal as well. She adds a bit of sugar and comes to sit at the table. "Please, eat them," he says. "We get oats every week at the rations and I hate them. Horse feed."
She stirs the cereal, and he wants to take back his words. He wonders what he's doing insulting the food of someone who clearly needed to eat more. "I like them," she says. "My mom used to make them every day when I was little. They never have them in the Capitol, though."
He almost laughs with the thought of them serving something as bland as oatmeal in the Capitol, but doesn't dare. Not when Johanna has mentioned her family, something she almost never did. "What's the plan for today?" he asks, once she's taken a few bites and it's clear he hasn't scared her off of breakfast.
"I need some clothes," she says. "I had to leave District 2 without most of my things, and I'm afraid they'd track me down if Baria sent them."
He considers this. There were some secondhand clothes at the market, but he thinks Katniss might have some if she hasn't given them away. "We should check with Peeta and Katniss before we go to the market. They might have some you can have for free."
She smiles. "I didn't exactly forget, but I wasn't thinking. Peeta is here."
Haymitch nods. "I didn't realize you two were close."
She shrugs. "You get close to anyone after you spend a month in a Capitol torture chamber with them. Look at me and Enobaria."
It's true, he had wondered a bit about the friendship, and he should have realized the origin, if he was being honest. Same with her connection to Peeta. Had he been purposely dense, trying to erase his memories of that part of the war, the parts he didn't like to think about? "We should go see them tonight, then," he says. "They live just a few houses down. Peeta has a little bakery operation going."
She pauses, spoon halfway to her mouth, as a spasm of pain seems to move through her. After a few seconds, she continues, taking her bite, and then nodding to his statement as if there was no delay. "Yeah, sounds good."