#Hypnotic Brass Ensemble | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hayffiebird · 3 months

Text

Taste of Strawberries, chap. 40 (part two)

Author’s note: TRIGGER WARNING for mentions of eating disorder, suicidal ideations, animal cruelty and sexual assault.

Forgive me for any typos. I am really tired!

Hayffie Post-Mockingjay Multi-chapter, Rated M

Four years have passed since the end of the war when Effie returns in to Haymitch’s life once again. An old friendship is renewed. Will it lead to something more?

Meanwhile Panem has entered a new era. The rebellion’s over, the borders are open but in the shadows, anger and mistrust are smoldering. Something that will affect Haymitch and Effie’s life in a way they never saw coming.

Chapter 40

The writing on the wall (part two)

“When we graduated from the Academy,” Annabel continued her story, “Effie was dead-set on becoming a licensed architect. For years, that’s all she ever talked about. But her father contacted my father. Asked if he could pull a few strings. Recommend his daughter for an escort position. An outline district would be absolutely fine. And then they gave her the good news like a sort of … early birthday present. One she could not return without breaking their hearts.

I had no idea what I wanted. Most of the time I just longed back to our Academy days. Those years remain some of the happiest of my life. Before I met June. It was Effie and I against the world. I even got smitten for the first time. A girl in our year with wild, curly, jet black hair. And the school, while strict, was also my ticket out of Cordelia’s little kingdom, or so I thought.

All the Snow children were homeschooled. Like most of the prominent ultra-rich families. Especially the daughters, destined for marriage rather than higher studies. But my father was adamant. His girls wouldn’t sit and wait until someone proposed. We would get a proper, thorough tuition first and embark on a fine career of some sort. So, first the Academy – then the University, just like he once did.

Pallas and Apollo’s Academy were boarding schools back then. ‘Give them to us young and they are ours forever’ was the motto. So even though I’d still see Cordelia during each Games, I’d only ever leave the school’s stone walls for the occasional holiday. With me tucked away, I thought, some other girl would take my place and I’d fade from Cordelia’s memory.

After graduation I moved back home again. All of us children were expected to stay at the Flickermansion until we were properly married off.

Father was present and he wasn’t. He outsourced everything. Nannies to dress us, chefs to feed us, housekeepers to clean up our mess. I think I joined The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – father’s house band, playing the trumpet because then at least I’d see him and not through a television screen.

He wasn’t a bad father. He loved us deeply. He just didn’t really have time to have five daughters. Especially after mother died. I believe he always tried to do what was best for us. But how can you really know what that is when you hardly ever see each other? Especially in a society that teaches you to push down every bad feeling that arises.

I had been home for just a couple of weeks when father summoned me to his office. Said he had some great news. I was betrothed.

‘Clearly you’ve made a good impression’, he said. ‘Cordelia asked for you herself. Her parents have blessed it. A fall wedding. How would you like that?”

I always knew I’d be married off eventually. To the daughter of a coal mining tycoon or maybe an award-winning up-and-coming director like Cressida. A match viewed as mutually beneficial for both families. But unlike many parents in the Capitol my father, our father, promised the five of us that we’d all have a say in who we got engaged to. He’d never sentence us to a forced marriage.

But in these matters he had no choice. And we both knew it. You didn’t say no to Snow.

‘This is the best thing that could’ve happened, Bee,” he said. ‘We couldn’t have hoped for a better match. The merging of the families … We’ll be related to the most powerful man in Panem.’

What he didn’t say, not in so many words, were the dangers of declining such a generous offer. If I so much as hesitated it would be questions. My wavering could set a ball rolling that we had no means to control.

After that, I was to spend all my Saturdays with Cordelia. At the mansion, closely chaperoned of course. All while the Snows and the Flickermans made arrangements for our three day wedding.”

She wet her lips, a vacant look in her eyes much like Effie when she shared a painful memory.

“I could never quite tell if she really was gay like me or just wanted something soft and submissive to use at her own fancy. Like the animals. Either way, I knew that once we were married she could beat me and enjoy me as she pleased and there was nothing I could do about it. Not without risking my family.

I didn’t know it then but looking back, I was clinically depressed by that point. Save those mandatory Saturdays I isolated myself from everyone, even Effie. Kept to the Flickermansion as much as possible. I’d counted calories on and off for years but it wasn’t until my engagement that the habit really escalated. Triggered an addition of sorts. I could control little else in my life but I could control what I ate. Or didn’t ate.

Weight loss is glorified in the Capitol. Praised no matter how you achieved it. People want to know your secret. Calls you morphling chic. But for me, it was never really about being thinner or looking a certain way. I doubt it ever really is, at the core if you have this disease.

First I thought I had control over it. This ‘weight journey’ of mine in lack of a better word. But once I reached my goal I started negotiate and bargain the finish line, pushed it further and further ahead. Because it was never really about the weight.

It was a system I built up, to protect myself from anxiety. To manage my feelings. It would just be me and anorexia sitting in a room and then it wouldn’t matter that I was alone and unhappy, facing a future I dreaded.

I had a hard time showing up for meals. To eat in front of people in general. I felt like everyone was watching me but if I missed too many dinners my sisters would ask questions.

So it became this destructive cycle of starving myself and then binge-eat as a response which triggered panic attacks so strong I went and drank Evermore drops to make myself vomit, only to tumble into a pit of self-loathing for wasting good food and so I was right back to not eating again.

And then there were still my Saturdays with Cordelia. For someone who apparently ‘asked for me herself’ she couldn’t care less about the wedding plans being made over our heads. We never really talked about it, but she spent more and more time with the animals and during the last weeks of her life she practically lived in the Asphodel Meadow.

It was really just another room, with the same twenty-foot-high walls but it had a force field, mimicking an open green plain, distant mountains and the wide blue sky.

Cordelia owned only one animal bigger than herself. A pony. I called her Boo for short and she was the fairest, mildest, most sweet-muzzled creature you ever saw. A cream colored, freckled Connemara who loved sugar. I always made sure to bring a few cubes in my dress pocket in the hopes that I might slip her some.

The Asphodel Meadow was an equestrian centre laid out with horse jumping obstacles and this is where she lived. Boo. I never got to ride her myself but I braided her mane, groomed her, cleaned her hooves. Minor things that bored Cordelia.

She was a fine rider. Had been on horseback since she was a toddler. She was supposed to always wear a helmet and never ride bareback but she hardly ever followed those rules.

One morning when I got there she was in a foul mood. I never did learn why but she took Boo out before she was saddled and ready. Didn’t care what anyone else had to say. Just grabbed the whip and swung herself onto the horse’s back.

I’d seen her hurt Boo before but never like that. She was livid. The people who worked the stable tried to rein her in but Cordelia ignored their every attempt. Furious, her and Boo soared over the jumping obstacles and either you got out of her way or you got run down.

Then something happened with the force field. To this day I don’t know what it was. If somewhere a fuse had blown or there was a power cut or someone simply turned it off but there was a sharp zapping sound and in an instant the Mind Flight was gone. Nothing left but the real ceiling, the high walls with no doors unlocked but the ones leading you back into the depths of the mansion.

The reaction from Cordelia was instantaneous. She shrieked with fury and slammed the whip down, harder and harder. Yelled at Boo to go faster. Punished her, I think, for everything wrong in her life. Whipped her bloody until I screamed at her to stop.

Finally crazed with pain and terror the horse bolted. The servants could not control her. Neither could Cordelia. She shouted at the mare but the animal was beyond reach. All the girl could do was drop the whip and clutch on to Boo’s mane. Grip her with her knees. She couldn’t even throw herself off at such sped without breaking bones, without being trampled.

Panicked, I watched it play out. Frozen like the first time she kissed me. And then Boo crashed into the vertical poles of a nearby obstacle. Cordelia flew forward and slammed into the ground, head-first.

The room was in an uproar. People running wild. Some for Boo, most of them for the young woman. All I did was stare at one of her boots, twitching with what little life still left in her. She’d broken her neck. By the time the doctor arrived she was already gone.

The next few days were a haze. I was in shock. Numb. Scared too. Scared over what might happen to my family. I know father called for an emergency meeting. A meeting we children had no part of, of course. It wasn’t hard to guess what the topic was. ‘What we will do if miss Cordelia’s death is blamed on Annabel’. As if any words or actions on our part would make the slightest difference if Snow decided to rain his fury down on us.

In the end, Cordelia’s fate was ruled a tragic accident. Capitol News made a glorious tribute about president Snow’s oldest daughter. ‘The free spirit and lover of animals. A fine rider heading toward a brilliant future when taken to young.’

I never forgot Snow’s face at the funeral. Hard-lined. Unsmiling. A white rose in his lapel. Very controlled and yet I couldn’t escape the feeling that on the inside he was dancing. Because a problem of his had been solved in an unexpected yet welcomed way. A bad leaf snipped off of an otherwise glorious rose.

And I lay awake at night wondering if I was much better. Wondered during those bleak, dark, sleepless hours if the real reason I did nothing when Cordelia died was because a part of me wanted her dead, wanted to be rid off her.

What kind of person was I for being more upset about Boo having to be put down than I was a dead girl. A girl probably feeling just as trapped and caged as I was, only more. If I could wave a wand and bring her back to life, would I? Would I really?

Not a week after the funeral, the citizens of the Capitol had already gotten on with their lives.

Not me.

I hadn’t seen Effie in ages. Hardly ever returned her calls. So when we finally did meet up at her place she noticed how much I’d changed physically, unlike my family who saw me every day. And I could pretend in front of my father and my sisters but not Effie. In the end, I told her everything.

About Cordelia. About my anxiety attacks. That I didn’t know how to eat normally anymore and that the only thing I could hope to achieve with my pathetic little existence was help continue Snow’s Games through my father’s name. All the things I never told a living soul. I could see how concerned she got. ‘I think we should talk to your father’, she said but I made her swear not to tell anyone. Not ever!

I already regretted opening up. Effie wanted to meet up again after that but I dodged her suggestions of when and where.

A week of this and my father took me aside again. Only this time, he came to me. For ten dreadful seconds I feared he’d announce another marriage candidate but that wasn’t it at all.

Effie Trinket had come to see him. Told him she was worried. Deeply worried. About me. That I seemed depressed. That I wasn’t eating.

I’ve never felt so betrayed. So deceived. I trusted her with my secrets and my darkness and she fed me to the wolves. The only real friend I thought I had in the Capitol.

So then our house doctor paid us a visit, I got my diagnosis and from that moment on everything changed.

Anorexia is a symptom of a larger problem but people thing the problem lies with the food. If only you start eating again you’ll be healthy and happy. So why aren’t you eating? Just eat!

So I started hiding my behavior – the sick ways in which I ate and it infected every ritual, every habit, surrounding food. Even with eyes on me, I hid parts of my meal in the napkin, smeared the gravy out across my plate, found ways to get my hands on Evermores and burned the bloody tissues in the open fireplace.

With each broken rule the grip on me grew tighter and tighter. My going to the dining hall was now mandatory. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, closely supervised by nurses employed by my father. And their obsessive-compulsive counting of calories only fed the existing problem, like petrol on a fire. I couldn’t use the bathroom without someone standing outside the door. They locked me in at night with guards at the door. Put bars on the windows so I couldn’t escape for a nocturnal run around the garden.

Ten days of this and I snapped. Completely. Called Effie. Screamed at her until my voice gave out. Told her I never wanted to see her again. That I’d never forgive her for doing this to me.

With Effie cut from my life, everything got even more unbearable. A month went by. Two. I was literally a prisoner at my father’s mansion. Like Cordelia. I don’t think my family trusted me outside those walls and they were right. There must have been questions about my empty chair in the house band but I guess father came up with an acceptable excuse. A secret passion project perhaps.

Finally, the hospital had to get involved. I was literally wasting away before my family’s eyes. Way beyond what even the Capitol considered attractive and still losing pound after pound.

This was the last resort. Executed in the biggest of secrecy. Father wanted as little bad publicity about me as possible after what happened with Cordelia. To protect me in his own way. I didn’t put up a fight. Was nothing I could do. Either I checked myself in to their psych ward voluntarily or I’d be committed against my will just the same.

My father never called. Never visited. Neither did my sisters. Looking back I believe they trusted that I was in good hands. That interfering would only hinder my progress. But at the time I felt nothing but utter and complete abandonment. That the outside world had finally forgotten me and wasn’t that what I always wanted?

Days passed. Weeks. Medicines. Therapy. Enteral nutrition pumped into my body. We were eight patients at my ward. Eight pale little ghosts floating around. Nurses and the occasional doctor filled the halls at all time. I didn’t care what they did to me. Didn’t care about anything anymore. Well, not quite. I was waiting. For my first day pass. One day outside those walls. Just an hour would do. So I could slip some garden rocks into my coat pockets and walk straight out into the River Theseus.

So outwardly, I co-operated. Did what they asked. Told them what they wanted to hear. But inside, I’d withdrawn so far into my numb little shell I might as well already be dead. The only thing that got me going during those first few weeks was visualizing the quiet, deep river. Over and over again.

But then, there came a letter. First and only time I ever got one at the ward. And I didn’t have to turn it over to know who sent it. I’d recognize that careful handwriting anywhere. The nurse who first brought it to me, stood with me as I read. Hours after I’d mustered up enough courage to do so.

Sweet Effie. It was as if all of my dark thoughts had somehow lit a beacon. A beacon so large she was able to see the smoke rising into the sky all the way from her apartment.

The nurses got a call through to her for me and an hour later she arrived in the little room for family and friends.

One look at her was all it took. Even after everything I said during that awful phone call months ago, her blue eyes held nothing but love and I completely fell apart. Her arms encircled me and I cried. More than cried. Wailed. Like a child sitting at the bottom of a well with no way to get up.

She helped me to the couch so my knees wouldn’t give out. Tears streamed down my face. I couldn’t even get any words out. Words of forgiveness, most of all. But I didn’t have to. She understood anyway. And she just held me. Caressed my back, my hair with quiet soothing sounds. Like I were a baby in her arms. She stayed with me for as long as she was allowed to. When they came to take me away and I started trembling she squeezed my hands and said, ‘Tomorrow.’

A fresh wave of pain filled Annabel’s eyes, but not for the reason Haymitch imagined.

“I didn’t know it then,” she said, “but she was already pregnant by that point. I was still on the inside when she gave birth to her boy, months later. We’ve never really talked about it since but I wonder sometimes. If I hadn’t ended our friendship when I did, right in the middle of her tender first time as escort in the Games … If I never said the things I did, would she have come to me instead of going to that party.”

“Not your fault,” said Haymitch. “Effie would never blame you. You want a culprit, that’s Kane.” And, with a heat behind it that made the hairs on his arms stand: “Sexual assault. That’s what it was. Doesn’t matter if he didn’t literally force himself onto her, it’s still fucking rape!”

He’d given it a lot of thought ever since Effie first told him and the more he did, the more he felt he wouldn’t mind jamming his knife into the man a couple of times. If they ever saw each other face to face.

Lucky for him he’s rotting in jail.

“I haven’t been there for Effie the way I should,” Annabel said, with a pain behind the words that he knew all too well. “It’s one of my deepest regrets. That I didn’t pay better attention. Listened to the things she wasn’t saying. The way you do. The way she did with me. I wish I’d spent more time with her. Especially after the war and my father’s trial. Instead I fled to District 11 every chance I got, first as a volunteer worker and then living here part-time.”

She drew a deep breath.

“But I am here now. She saved my life. She knew I didn’t want help. Knew I’d hate her for interfering . Knew I had the means to turn the Capitol against her if I wanted to. And she was fine with that. Fine with all of it. Because I would be alive to do it … Takes a pretty remarkable person,” she said, “to do something like that.”

Haymitch nodded.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Yeah.”

“You’ve been through hell,” Annabel said. ”I know that. Worse than any of us can possibly imagine. I just told you all this because I want you to know I understand. What it’s like when the people you love most goes behind your back. Tries to make you do something you don’t want to do. She did the same to me.

But it wasn’t betrayal. It was love. She carried me on her back when I couldn’t go any further. Helped me get the help I needed to help myself.

Now she does the same to you. Carries you on her back. Carries Amy and Ian too. And she is strong, without a doubt. Stronger than most. But she won’t manage it forever. No one can.

Now, I’m not telling you to check yourself into a rehab facility. Maybe you can’t. And if you can’t you can’t. But if you want to do something for me, then I beg of you from the bottom of my heart: Don’t break her just because you cannot live without her.”

Author's note: Special thank you to my sweet, dear friend Sara for sharing her experiences of eating disorders with me to help with this chapter. She and Annabel are not the same person and they don’t share the same backstory but the things I got right about anorexia is 100 % thanks to Sara!

Also, as you might have noticed I've made a slight change in past chapters concerning Haymitch sleeping with other Capitol women when drunk.

In my defence, I included that headcanon in 2015 so it's been a minute but lately I've thought to myself: "Oh come on! Effie would NEVER let Haymitch do that when he's drunk and isn't thinking straight! Especially after what happened between her and Kane."

So I went and changed it soo that poor/lucky Haymitch only got to sleep with two women he really cared about.

#hayffie #the hunger games renaissance #haymitch x effie #caesar flickerman #the hunger games #haymitch abernathy #effie trinket #my fanfiction

6 notes · View notes