Prompt:

TheHiddenTruth - I don't know you are still taking requests or even already written this...but what I've really, really wanted is a haymitch pov where he finds Effie in the Capitol, laying on the floor after being horribly tortured. I imagine he would have been absolutely heartbroken...afterall, that's one of the only times he ever cries in the fanfic! :_(

He stared at the motionless body lying still in the hospital bed. Bandages were wrapped tight around ever limb - the face swollen, almost unrecognizable. The room was silent save for the beeping that monitored her heart - a slow, steady beep that Haymitch let his thoughts get lost in.

His own body was exhausted.

The adrenaline had drained his body - he felt ready to fall over, but he stayed upright in the chair beside her bed as best he could.

He wouldn't leave her.

Not again.

And it was if the scene replayed itself in his mind. Finding the cells. Breaking the locks. Finding her body on the ground - covered in blood and bile and sick. He had thought she was dead. A feeling of dread had coursed through him - one he hadn't felt for years.

He wouldn't lose her.

He wouldn't leave her.

He didn't know what to do. Her body weighed nothing when he lifted it - but the pain he saw in her eyes weighed him down and brought him to the edge where he let go - where he cried.

He was hurting her - but he didn't mean to. They needed to get her out of that cell - out into the light, out to where she could be taken care of. Healed.

Healed … would she ever heal?

His fingers gently stroked the skin that was visible - her forehead, her fingertips. Pink with life and no longer matted with the dried blood that had once covered them. Little spots that were Effie - little spots that were hope, signs she was under the bruises, the bandages. That it was truly here in bed - that she was alive.

But what was life now?

Guilt flooded Haymitch.

If it wasn't her body naked on the dirty ground - it was her face. The last look she gave him before the elevator doors had shut. The face was resigned to what was going to happen - that she would be left. That she would have to survive on her own. That he could not protect her.

Again and again he thought what they could have done differently.

Kill Aulus?

With what?

And was there time?

There must have been …

Wasn't there?

"You should try to get some rest," Plutarch had said, resting a hand on Haymitch's shoulder. "She's safe."

"I want to be here when she wakes up."

"Which may not be for a while."

"I'm gonna be here when she wakes up."

It was a pointless battle so Plutarch left him.

Fingertips …

Soft and delicate still …

Haymitch pressed his lips gently to them.

"You take your time, princess. I'm not leaving."